Coming back from maternity leave while starting a new job is not necessarily reassuring. Add to that the wish to continue breastfeeding her child and you may have an idea of ‘”the apprehension” what Anaëlle felt when she returned to work in a bank with more than 500 employees, near Montpellier. At the start, the situation looks good: in agreement with her employer, her working days are shortened by one hour to allow her to pick up her son sooner.
But to maintain milk production, it must be stimulated regularly. Anaëlle also has to stock up on breast milk so that her baby – cared for by a childminder – can be fed when she is away. She therefore has no choice but to draw her milk within the company itself. His office in the heart of the open space is not suitable, no room being made available to breastfeeding employees, only the toilets remain: “During the meal break, I ate in ten minutes and I went to pump my milk three-quarters of an hour in the toilet”, she remembers.
Anaëlle exhausts her biceps by squeezing her manual breast pump (a kind of pump connected to a reservoir and which is placed on the nipple to suck the milk), for lack of an electrical outlet, while being “harassed by a cleaner who believed [qu’elle] spending too much time in the toilet”. As her company does not have a refrigerator, she also had to equip herself with a cooler allowing her to keep the bottles until the end of her working day.
According to the labor code, Anaëlle’s employer should have set up a space dedicated to breastfeeding. “A company, when it has more than 100 employees, must provide a breastfeeding room, in its establishment or nearby”, recalls Maître Nathalie Lailler, lawyer in social law at the bar of Caen, while World Breastfeeding Week (SMAM) is being held in France, from October 17 to 23. Adopted in August 1917, this provision was drafted mainly to allow female workers to breastfeed their children at the factory. Today, most breastfeeding employees prefer expressing their milk.
Regardless of the size of the company to which they belong, “women who breastfeed their child, explains Maître Lailler, can benefit for one year, from the birth of the child, from time to breastfeed which is one hour a day during working hours, and this time can be divided into two half hours, the first in the morning and the second in the afternoon.” If these breaks are a right – for employees in the private sector as well as in the public sector – the labor code does not, however, provide that they are remunerated.
This has not prevented several professional branches from setting up a more favorable framework for breastfeeding employees. Collective agreements in the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector or trade in building materials, for example, impose payment for the hour of breastfeeding. Other regulations, as at Air France, make it possible to adjust schedules and to assign nursing air hostesses to ground positions.
But between the regulatory or legal framework and the reality of daily business, there is sometimes a gap. Marie-Xavier Laporte, dietician, lactation consultant in Lyon and member of the Information for breastfeeding association (IPA) talks about a “hostility” felt by many breastfeeding employees: “There are always chores to do when they go to express their milk. The phone rings, no one to answer… It is quite stressful to express milk at work, if there is no not a safe or closed space”. Marie-Xavier Laporte also cites the case of a hospital employee who lost half an hour to get to the breastfeeding room, very far from her department. In some rarer cases, adds the former nurse, employers simply refuse to arrange work space and time.
What are the risks for companies that do not comply with the breastfeeding law? “On the one hand, a fifth-class contravention, answers Maître Nathalie Lailler, i.e. a fine of 1,500 euros per employee concerned and 3,000 euros per employee concerned in the event of a repeat offense, which is not nothing anyway. On the other hand, continues the lawyer, the employee may take industrial action for discrimination related to maternity and seek damages and interest, or even more. As soon as we discriminate, it is a serious fault on the part of the employer and we can even go so far as to request the termination of the contract”.
According to the lawyer, prosecutions for failure to respect the right to breastfeed are very rare. The best-known case concerns Ikea. In 2018, the CGT and Force Ouvrière seized the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Versailles after the refusal by the furniture company to organize negotiations for the establishment of breastfeeding rooms. Despite the failure of the procedure – justice recalled that only a labor inspector was authorized to put Ikea on notice – management still agreed to sign an agreement. Since September 2020, all employees of the group in France must benefit from a dedicated room and one hour daily paid for breastfeeding.
Supporting Breastfeeding at Work: A Guide UNICEF for Employers#breast-feed #breastfeeding #nutrition #work #congemotherhood #back to work #maternity https://t.co/SA90NaenbY
— IPA Breastfeeding (@IPA_Breastfeeding) May 16, 2022
The business world still has a lot of progress to make, believes Marie-Xavier Laporte, but the lactation consultant, who is sometimes called upon by bosses, is keen to highlight the effort “extraordinary” of some of them. The manager of a hairdressing salon who transforms her “very big car” all comfort in the breastfeeding room for its employees. Or those employees of SMEs who turn off the telephones before leaving for lunch to “leave alone”, their colleagues who pumped their milk.
Anaëlle, she ended up resigning before the birth of her second child. Last September, she found a new job “100% teleworking”. She expresses her milk “near a sink”, with an electric breast pump and above all… Away from the toilet.