Breast-Feeding Becoming a Workplace Issue

In an office bathroom, amid the sounds of toilets flushing, a new mother pumps milk from her breasts into bottles that will later be fed to her newborn child.

At another company across town, a mother hides in a supply closet filling plastic sandwich bags with her milk, praying that none of her co-workers will need a pencil or pen.

Such unpleasant scenes, women’s advocates say, are becoming more common with the growing presence of women in the workplace.

With more than 67% of all women of childbearing age in the labor force, according to one medical study on breast-feeding, some women’s advocates predict that the issue may soon emerge from the shadows of bathroom stalls to become a part of the national discussion on the needs of working mothers and families in general.

Some experts and new mothers say the need for safe, clean places for women to pump milk for later use is almost as important to some working women as more commonly discussed issues, such as family leave and flextime.

“If you think about it, would you go and prepare your own lunch in a toilet stall?” asked Rona Cohen, an assistant clinical professor of maternal child health at UCLA’s School of Nursing. “We wouldn’t do that, but yet we’re preparing our babies’ food in toilet stalls.”

Nell Merlino of the New York-based Ms. Foundation for Women says that businesses must confront their responsibilities to better integrate work and family issues. “They have become places,” she said, “that are very separate from the rest of our lives and women are forced to try and change that because they have so much responsibility.”

In some places, change has already started to occur. For the last five years, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has offered employees a lactation program complete with classes, 24-hour counselors, a pump for each mother and a lactation room. This year, Burbank implemented the same program for its employees, including an officer from the Police Department.

“It’s an idea whose time has come,” said John K. Nicoll, Burbank’s management services director. “Once organizations try it, it will be as common as the existence of sick leave and medical plans.”

Women’s advocates and others say it is difficult to know just how widespread the problems really are. Many women simply stop breast-feeding when they return to work, anticipating the difficulties that may arise. Others continue but never inform supervisors about their needs.

“Women are very worried about walking into a workplace and having to identify their needs as women,” said Abby Leibman, executive director of the California Women’s Law Center. “There are so many employers who don’t even want to accommodate the fact that women are going to have babies.”

Women make up 46% of the work force. According to the U.S. Labor Department, they will account for 62% of the net gain in workers between 1990 and 2005, and three-fourths will become pregnant during their working lives.

Leibman said: “There are some conclusions that one can draw: That there are increasing numbers of mothers in the workplace, that mothers are certainly going to be faced with an option of breast-feeding and bottle-feeding, and that there is going to be an increasing number of women choosing to breast-feed.”

In 1991--the last date for which figures are available--53.3% of all infants in the United States were being breast-fed when they left the hospital. That percentage was about the same as during the 1980s, according to La Leche League International, a nonprofit organization that promotes and supports breast-feeding.

Studies show that babies who are breast-fed are less likely to become ill than those on formula. Breast-feeding offers health benefits to the mother as well. Healthy People 2000, a master plan for increasing the nation’s health issued in 1990 by Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, lists increasing breast-feeding as one of the 298 goals that could help the nation achieve better health.

Businesses have been slow, however, to accommodate working women who choose to breast-feed.

“I find people are embarrassed by the topic,” Cohen said. “You don’t use the ‘B-word’ in business.”

Aside from having trouble finding a place to pump, mothers may also encounter supervisors who refuse to allow them to rearrange break times to stay on a pumping schedule, Cohen said.

That’s exactly what Teresa Riegel of Detroit encountered when she attempted to return to her job at Chrysler Corp. after taking maternity leave.

The day before her scheduled return to work last November, Riegel met with members of Chrysler’s human resources department, said her attorney, Ralph Sirlin. She explained that she would need to pump during the day and asked if she could extend two of her breaks by 12 to 16 minutes each and make the time up at some other point during the day.

But Sirlin said company officials refused her request. Instead, they offered other suggestions.

“They would say things like, ‘Why don’t you pump your breasts before you come to work and then you can pump them after you leave?’ ” Sirlin said. “They don’t understand the whole idea of breast-feeding. They can’t expect this woman to hold the milk for nine hours. It just doesn’t work that way.”

Riegel, who has been off work since November, has sued the corporation, seeking about $15,000 in back wages and compensation for the “humiliation and embarrassment.” K. C. Hortop, an attorney representing Chrysler, declined to comment on the case while it is in court.

For Judie Sarquiz and Robin Torrellas of Burbank, the path has been much easier.

Both women participate in the city’s free lactation program, designed and operated by Sanvita, a division of Medela Inc., a McHenry, Ill.-based company that manufactures breast pumps.

“I think it’s fantastic that they care enough about me and what is dearest to my heart--my child,” Sarquiz said. “They are supporting us and saying, ‘You matter to us.’ ”

Under the Sanvita Corporate Lactation Program, expectant mothers and their mates attend classes on breast-feeding. Each woman is given her own pump and assigned a counselor who gives guidance and support, particularly right after the baby’s birth when families may begin questioning their decision to breast-feed.

Twice a day for about 10 minutes, Sarquiz and Torrellas leave their desks in the city’s Finance Department and head to the basement floor to the new lactation room. The setting is decidedly homey--the room is softly lit and the walls covered with photographs of women and their children. There is a sofa, a dresser with a mirror and plants.

“It’s relaxed in here,” Torrellas said sitting on the sofa. “It’s like a little sanctuary.”

Both women say their children are healthy and they attribute their good health to breast-feeding.

“I’ve only had to stay out one day” to care for her daughter, Sarquiz said.

That, says Patricia A. Olowiany, a registered dietitian and certified lactation educator, should convince any company of the merits of supporting workers who choose to breast-feed.

“What benefits the baby benefits the mother and ultimately the company,” said Olowiany, who markets the program for Sanvita.

And lactation programs are not just for women. At the DWP, where the work force is about 77% male, the Sanvita lactation program “is one of the most utilized in the company,” said Kimberlee Vandenakker, a DWP work family specialist.

“Part of the lactation program is education, how to nurse properly,” Vandenakker said. “We coach the male employees how to be supportive in the nursing process.”

The program is open to employees’ female relatives.

At its two main offices in Los Angeles and Sun Valley, the DWP has set up lactation rooms. Partitions have been set up in smaller offices so workers can still pump.

For Nicoll, the Burbank city official, the decision to offer the program was an easy one. At least half of his department is made up of women.

“I couldn’t afford the price of having Robin and Judie stay home,” Nicoll said. “These are women who have tough jobs. . . . It’s appropriate and humane, and ultimately it makes good business sense.”