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Every business of significant size I'm ever in these days has a "lactation room" or something similar.
I've never seen a Lactation room?!!?
I'm gonna call BS on this one Bill V.
You've never seen a lactation room?!!? I'm gonna have to call BS right back at you, bud. Do you only do business with companies headquartered in yurts?
Does Wal-mart have lactation rooms? how about Home Depot? Lowes? any government offices? Where have you seen these many rooms?
I find it ironic and almost humorous that for the companies you chose to use as your examples, I actually can answer to three of them.
Yes, Wal-Mart has lactation rooms--at least at the two stores closest to me. They're available to both employees and customers. I'll grant that one of these stores was built less than five years ago, and the other was completely gutted and rebuilt internally within the last two years--and that relatively new construction may be a factor here.
I can't speak to HD--but at my local Lowe's, there's an employee bulletin board near the public restrooms--the type that has the posters indicating the federal minimum wage and things like that which most workplaces have. On it is a sign which indicates that if any employees are needing a lactation room, there is an office which is currently being used as storage space, but which has a chair, table, and electrical outlet available which can be used for that purpose, and has the name of a manager to contact for access. (And if you're wondering why I was reading it--my daughter was in the ladies' room at the time, and I was reading the board just to pass the time while waiting for her.)
And just a couple weeks ago, I was at the Hennepin County Government Center in Brooklyn Park, MN, getting my drivers license renewed. A woman a couple people ahead of me in line was holding her baby, and was told that whatever she was there for would be a 60 to 90 minute wait. She informed the attendant that she'd need to breastfeed her kid in that time, and asked if there was a location to do that. She was informed that yes, there's a lactation room, accessible from inside a certain women's restroom, and that she can be provided the key for that room whenever she was ready.
Because of a couple layoffs, and a couple different temporary jobs between layoffs, I've worked for five different companies in the past two years (all are either local medical device or pharmaceutical manufacturers), and I've been in approximately a dozen of their facilities. And I can't think of any of them which didn't have a room available for pumping or breastfeeding. Some call it a "lactation room", some call it a "wellness room" (as it can be used for other medical needs, such as insulin shots or just having a dark space to wait out a migraine). All had a chair and table; most also had a mini-fridge to store the milk after pumping. (Note that the proposed policy you quoted doesn't say that the room has to be dedicated for pumping/breastfeeding--it just needs to be private and available. So a closed office, a partially used storage space, a converted closet, etc., all meet the requirement. As does the public elementary school where my wife teaches--which doesn't have a dedicated room, but when my wife was pumping for our two youngest kids, she and the principal set up a schedule where he would be out of his office at certain times during the day so she could use it for pumping. An arrangement like this fully meets the proposed new rules.)
You must do alot of work with unweb mothers...
What in the world does the marital status of a mother have to do with their need to pump? Mothers need to do this, regardless of whether they're married or not.
