Novartis Reps in Civil War Over Whether Pregnant Women Should Be Fired

A mini-firestorm is sweeping Novartis after ABC commentator John Stossel aired a piece on ABC’s 20/20 suggesting that pharmaceutical sales reps who get pregnant have no right to their jobs (see video below).

The piece focused on Holly Waters (pictured), a drug rep who alleges in a lawsuit she was fired by Novartis as she was about to go on maternity leave. Waters claims she was a top performer. You can read an inflammatory column about Waters by Stossel here: It’s titled, “Pregnant Women Have No Right to Their Jobs.”

To back his case, Stossel found Carrie Lukas, vp of the “Independent Women’s Forum,” to say:

If my employer decides they no longer want me as an employee, then it should be their right to fire me.

And while some pregnant women work harder than any man, she says, let’s be honest: Most pregnant workers impose costs on employers.

“Responsibilities are shifted each time I go to a doctor’s appointment,” Lukas said. “That means I’m unavailable to do whatever work needs to be done during that time, which means one of my colleagues is often picking up the slack.”

As you can see here, Lukas believes there should be virtually no regulation whatsoever over employers’ rights to fire people or not hire people.

Stossel’s story is an old one. It stems from a 2007 lawsuit first reported in the NY Times:

Three of the Novartis plaintiffs, as well as 28 others who submitted affidavits, said that women who became pregnant suffered a variety of poor treatment, including arbitary discipline, denial of promotions, and termination of employment.

“Many attest to specific comments by managers indicating a hostility to pregnancy,” Judge Lynch wrote in his opinion, … One woman testified that her manager said he preferred not to hire young females, stating, “First comes love, then come marriage, then comes flex time and a baby carriage.”

Another manager allegedly encouraged a young woman to get an abortion. Yet another woman alleges that employees were urged during a training session to avoid pregnancy. “The declarant, five months pregnant at the time, drew the eye of the trainer, who said, ‘Oops, too late,’ ” Judge Lynch wrote in his opinion.

Stossel has managed to turn the suit into a civil war at Novartis between reps who don’t want to be fired for having a family and those who continue working while their colleagues have children. A selection of comments from CafePharma (all typos in the original):

I agree with Stossel. I am a woman, I don’t want children I find it offensive a lot of times when women who are popping out kids like puppies are constantly taking off for one thing or another because of their children, at my last job (with a big pharma) they could take days off that were not counted as vacation because of “sick” kids therefore getting WAY mor time off than anyone else. It’s BS…just my opinon!

Okay, let say that you have a guy/girl team in a territory. The girl gets pregnant and goes out on pregnancy leave and takes additional time off to bond with the little rug rat. The guy is left in the field and has to handle the whole territory, sometimes for 6 months or more. Obviously half the share of voice is gone, the territories chance of performing up to par is diminished, she is exempt from evaluation due to being out on pregnancy leave and the guy is screwed re: bonus, etc. It’s not fair to the rep left in the field when one is out pregnant. When one partner is out, the requirements on the territory need to be adjusted downward to be fair, but no one is fair to the rep left working.

I would be willing to bet that the suit will in no way address the circumstances of the rep left in the field. It will only deal with the pregnant woman’s rights. I have been in such a predicament before when the woman was barely back and became pregnant again. Three others in the pod quit and I stayed around to be placed on a PIP and eventually terminated.

Go women go! I am on your side.

The commenter may be right that the suit won’t fix Novartis’ alleged policy of not taking into account rep performance when a colleague is out for an extended period. But that hardly seems the fault of the pregnant woman — it looks more like a lousy management practice that can easily be changed to account for reps handling territories where colleagues are absent.

Hat tip to IguanaBio.