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PACEs in Maternal Health

One Woman’s Fight to Make The Postal Service A Better Place for Working Moms (www.workingmother.com)

 

By Rebecca Gale, Working Mother, March 23, 2021

Charnae Easton was forced to breast-pump in front of a window. So she sued—and won. Here, she shares her story for the first time.

Charnae Easton knew she wanted to breastfeed her daughter. Even when she was pregnant, she told her supervisors at the Richmond, California post office where she worked as a mail carrier that she would need a place to pump milk when she returned from leave. She’d even planned to work up until she gave birth, because, like many women in the US, especially low-wage workers, United States postal employees don’t qualify for paid maternity leave. Charnae knew she was a good, hard worker—she got along well with her supervisors, liked the job and felt reasonably confident that the postal service would give her such accommodations.

But for Charnae—and so many women around the country who lack access to lactation accommodations at work—it didn’t work out that way. She gave birth to baby Jada in August 2018. Even though she had two other children—a son, now 15, and a daughter, now 9—this was the first time she suffered postpartum depression. When she did return, she was directed to breast-pump in her supervisor’s office, in front of a window overlooking the main room, in plain view of other mail carriers.

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