Under provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), companies are required to provide break time for nursing mothers “to express breast milk for her nursing child for 1 year after the child’s birth each time such employee has need to express milk.” According to the law, employers must also provide “a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public, which may be used by an employee to express breast milk.”
This law applies to all companies with a total of 50 or more employees regardless of where these employees are located and applies to all nonexempt employees of the organization.
Employers with fewer than 50 employees are not subject to the law if compliance imposes undue hardship determined by the difficulty or expense of compliance in comparison to the size, financial resources, nature and structure of the employer’s business.
While under federal law employees need not be compensated for the break, if the company currently provides compensated breaks, an employee who uses this time to express milk must be paid in the same way other employees are paid for breaks.
For additional information about break time for nursing mothers, please refer to the following US Department of Labor Fact Sheet: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs73.htm .
To learn more about this and other human resources issues, call BAI today at 801.444.9919.
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