2024-01-10 17:06:28
Experiencing a miscarriage and losing three days of salary, a double punishment that many women had to face. Since January 1, 2024 and the entry into force of the law of July 7, 2023, this situation should be a thing of the past.
Indeed, in the event of a classic work stoppage, the patient has, unless decided otherwise by his employer or the collective agreement, three days of waiting, in other words unpaid. A law adopted on June 29, 2023 provides for “facilitated sick leave” in the event of miscarriage.
Miscarriage refers to the spontaneous termination of pregnancy during the first five months. It causes vaginal bleeding, pain and can have serious psychological consequences.
A work stoppage with lack of discretion?
On paper, this is progress. But, when we carefully read one of the terms of this measure detailed on the social security website, the scope seems much more restricted. In an article posted online on January 4, 2024 on ameli.fr, women who are experiencing a miscarriage are warned:
“If your employer maintains your salary during your work stoppage, he will be compensated on your behalf for all of the days of work stoppage prescribed for you. He will then be able to deduce that your termination is linked to a spontaneous termination of pregnancy”.
This last sentence therefore specifies an important element: the employer may have “indirect knowledge of the medical reason for your stoppage”. “Indirectly” because miscarriage is the only reason for not having a waiting day in the event of work stoppage.
For women who prefer not to disclose this information to their employer, the social security website advises: “You can ask your practitioner to prescribe sick leave under common law conditions. He will then be compensated with application of the waiting period”.
The Social Security department interviewed by La Provence specifies that this is an “indirect consequence of the application of the law”. Before adding that “this only concerns the situations of insured persons whose employer applies subrogation”. Salary subrogation concerns “60% of work stoppages”. This refers to the fact that daily health insurance benefits are transmitted directly to the company when it maintains the salary of its employee during a work stoppage.
Before concluding, “the national health insurance fund and the social security department ensured that the policyholders concerned were informed of this situation.”
What does a woman risk if her employer becomes aware of the premature end of a pregnancy? She unwittingly informs her employer of a possible child project. Information that can have real consequences on a career.
In an interview published in March 2023 in Causette magazine, Claire Hédon, rights defender, denounces the fact that despite a very protective law for pregnant women, the body she heads receives a large number of seizures of the proportion of women who are expecting a child.
Pregnancy, a risk for women’s careers
She describes some of the most common situations: “Women apply for a position, they are accepted and then, when they say they are expecting a child, they are ultimately not accepted. In the private sector, we have women on permanent contracts who are forced to resign or fired because they are pregnant. In public employment, these tend to be non-renewals of fixed-term contracts.”
According to an Odoxa survey for Premup in 2015, 21% of 25-34 year olds have already hidden a pregnancy for as long as possible because they feared their employer’s reaction. 17% of women who have already been pregnant at work or are currently pregnant and working declared their pregnancy to their employer at 4 or 5 months of pregnancy, or even 6.
Furthermore, as the Décideurs RH site points out, “nearly a third of women felt that the announcement of their pregnancy had disturbed their manager (study conducted among 37,000 employees by the CSEP and the BVA Institute in 2018). 1 in 4 women have experienced a discrimination or harassment at work due to pregnancy or maternity (Defender of Rights, 2020 Barometer of the perception of discrimination in employment)”.
The law adopted in July 2023 for better care of miscarriages partly anticipated this risk of discrimination. It indeed offers protection against dismissal for women who experience a late miscarriage (which occurs after the first trimester and before the 6th month of pregnancy).
In this case, the employer cannot “terminate the employment contract of an employee during the 10 weeks following a medically certified spontaneous termination of pregnancy”. However, as Ameli.fr points out, the most frequent miscarriages are those which take place during the first trimester of pregnancy. In this case, the law does not provide any particular protection.
Sandra Lorenzo, the author of this article, wrote a book in 2022 and produced a podcast on miscarriage, she also co-founded the collective “miscarriage, true experience” with five other committed women. With other members of this collective, she was heard in a parliamentary committee at the beginning of 2023 on this bill, before it was debated and ratified in the National Assembly and the Senate in July.
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