After Train Worker Loses Baby And Sues MTA, Changes Are Finally Coming for Pregnant Workers

This past June, Jillian Williams had just completed her one-year mandatory probation period at the MTA. It was a difficult time to be new. The pandemic hit the train system hard with 131 transit workers already dead from COVID-19, and more than 3,500 tested positive. At one point, Williams, who often worked as a train conductor on the A line, had to quarantine because she worked with someone who got sick.

“It’s COVID, I’m on probation, but I’m also pregnant, and I have asthma,” Williams, 30, said. “Still went to work, because I had to.”

For Williams, the pregnancy would not offer the kind of bright spot that often comes with giving birth.

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She made it through the worst of the pandemic, but her pregnancy was taking a toll. Her feet were swollen and painful. She wanted to take her boots off, but didn’t out of fear she’d never get her shoes back on again. Instead, she kept slippers in her car for when her shift was finally over.

“I’d limp to the car,” she said. “Slippers are a must after that.”

Williams said her doctor gave her two notes that said she should avoid lifting heavy items and standing for long periods. Being a train conductor requires both. Now that her one-year probation ended, she felt confident enough to finally ask for a job with lighter duties. The problem was nobody could tell her how to file a request for what’s called an "accommodation."

Someone in her crew office, where she gets her daily assignments, told her to call the Equal Employment Office. That office sent her back to the crew office. Then Williams said she spotted a hotline number for pregnant transit workers on a flyer, but it always went to voicemail and no one called back.

Finally, a co-worker suggested faxing the request to the superintendent of the crew office. That person told her she needed an appointment with the MTA’s doctor at one of its Medical Assessment Centers before her request could be approved. She said she called on a Friday and got an appointment for the following Monday.

But she still had to work on that Saturday moving trains around a rail yard in East New York. It’s one of the three jobs that train conductors are allowed to do aside from operating a train or being a platform conductor, which required long days on her feet often with no bathroom nearby.

So on Saturday, June 27th, she reported to work at the rail yard, ready to crank a 20-pound hand switch that allowed her to move trains around. She considered it her least bad option.

“Hand switching, it may have taken a little more physical effort, but the upside of that was that it had a good amount of down time,” Williams said.

The East New York yard is a sprawling jumble of tracks with Broadway Junction on one side and the Evergreens Cemetery overlooking the yard on the other. There are only three MTA yards out of nearly two dozen that still use manual switches. This was one of them. The others are electronic, and can be operated easily with the push of a button.

Before she was pregnant, operating the heavy manual switch was easy for the strong, 5’ 11", Williams. Even if it meant walking over big chunks of loose rocks and electrified third rails.

But this day was different. When she cranked the switch she felt cramps. And then her water broke.

She said she had no idea what to do next. She called her mom. She wanted to leave, but she also knew she had to finish the job or else there could be a derailment. So she waited for the train to move and then secured it in place by pulling the switch back again.

“And then I started feeling the baby moving, and I started screaming. And then I remember I got on the radio, 'Dispatcher to the deck, I need EMS,'” she recalled.

They couldn’t understand her. A train operator ran over to help her.

“By then, my baby was crowned, so I’m waddling back to the shack, my baby’s literally between my legs,” she said.

She made it to the shack, a dirty one-room structure, with no electricity, a shelf, a table, and a chair.

“I was on the floor with mad blood,” Williams said.

She said it took 15 to 20 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. Her mother showed up while she waited. Shortly after, at the hospital, her baby girl was pronounced dead.

Williams blames the MTA for the death of her baby and has joined a lawsuit with three other women suing the agency for violating a 2014 New York City Human Rights Law meant to protect women from “pregnancy discrimination."

Dina Bakst, co-founder of A Better Balance, a national legal advocacy organization, has used the law to sue employers on behalf of other pregnant women. She said it requires employers to find a reasonable accommodation for a pregnant woman if she asks for one and if the employer knows or should’ve known she might need one.

“What had been happening, and still unfortunately happens too often, is that when an employee requests an accommodation, they’re summarily put out on unpaid leave, or told to come back after they have the baby. This is impossible for pregnant workers who need a paycheck,” she told Gothamist/WNYC.

Bakst, who is not involved in this case, said under the law Williams shouldn’t have had to provide a doctor’s note to get an accommodation or go see the MTA’s own doctor in order to get lighter duties.

“That is not a typical process and one that raises a lot of red flags for me,” she said.

The MTA wouldn’t answer questions about the process for getting accommodations or say how many pregnant women receive them each year. It also declined to discuss Williams’ case because of the lawsuit.

"We are committed to doing all we can to ensure we are providing an accommodating and welcoming workplace for pregnant employees and new mothers,” an MTA spokesperson wrote.

At New York City Transit there are more than 50,000 subway and bus workers. About 20% are women, and of those 92% are women of color. Nearly 6,500 are Black. Williams, who is Black, has never said that race played a role in what happened to her, but it’s a fact thatBlack women disproportionately suffer from birth-related issues. Black infants also die at twice the rate of white infants.

Retu Singla is the attorney representing Williams and three others. Singla said she had a strong case against the MTA for violating the New York City Human Rights Law even before Williams lost her baby and joined the lawsuit. Another plaintiff Aishah Miller, suffered at the MTA during two of her pregnancies, according to the complaint.

Miller was a car cleaner at the MTA for five years, responsible for picking up trash, and sometimes human waste. She also had to lift heavy garbage bags, and buckets of water and bleach. According to the lawsuit, in the fall of 2017 she was nearing the start of her third trimester, and had developed gestational diabetes so she asked her superintendent for an accommodation. While she waited for the outcome of her request, the lawsuit states a supervisor told her not to sit down during work or ask co-workers for help.

By the end of 2017, the MTA still hadn’t responded to her request. On Christmas day, she was carrying a bucket of water while nine months pregnant and injured her back. She had to leave work and file for workers compensation.

The second time she was pregnant, she got the accommodation, but according to the complaint, her supervisor kept adding duties to her daily work, like asking her to mix toxic chemicals and clean train tracks. She complained to the superintendent that “accommodation” work was harder than her regular duties, but he didn’t do anything about it. Finally, the lawsuit says, for her own safety, she decided to take an unpaid leave of absence.

Singla said after news spread about Williams delivering her baby in a train yard, more women at the MTA started contacting her to complain about how they were treated during their pregnancies.

“My phone at one point, I won’t say ringing off the hook, but I was getting a lot of calls with women describing their situations from years ago,” she said. While the statute of limitations makes it impossible for all the women to join the lawsuit, she’s hoping a judge will agree that an entire class of women have been discriminated against and grant her class action status. “This is definitely a problem at the transit authority that isn’t new.”

It’s an issue the Transport Workers Union, Local 100, said it’s been trying to address for several years. The union represents nearly 40,000 transit workers.

Last year, the TWU sued the MTA for not creating enough positions for pregnant transit workers who need lighter duties. President of the Union, Tony Utano, said currently, the MTA argues it would be illegal to set aside jobs just for pregnant women because men can have health conditions that require accommodations too.

“If we put aside jobs for pregnant women and a man got restricted, he could actually ask for that job,” Utano said.

Utano said the MTA argues it would be discrimination against non-pregnant employees and would also violate the New York City Human Rights Law.

Bakst said this is a commonly used “smoke screen” that flies in the face of the Pregnancy Fairness Act.

The union’s case is still pending.

Utano said the union always has women in mind when it comes to the bargaining table. He pointed out that in 2012 it secured two weeks of leave for men and women after a baby is born. Two weeks sounds short, but he said it’s better than what they had before, which was nothing. Women used to have to use sick days or vacation days after giving birth if they wanted time off.

Utano said women are now in nearly every department, including masonry, carpentry, and plumbing. He defended the union’s advocacy so far while acknowledging there’s more to do.

“It’s a work in progress, women are stepping into jobs that just weren’t done by women here, and now they’re done by women, and we’re going to make sure they’re successful,” he said.

Evangeline Byars is a train operator who is also on the executive board at the union, she said many women have lost faith in both the MTA and the union because change is taking too long.

“We’re like 50 years into being a part of the transit authority,” she said, incredulously.

She argues the problem is even worse than it appears because many women are single mothers who don’t want to jeopardize their positions by asking for lighter duties when they’re pregnant.

“They’re concerned if they speak up, will they be retaliated against, and lose their jobs,” she said. She alleged that many women just continue to work until there’s actually an accident on the job.

“This happens all the time, they go to climb up on the train and fall,” she said,” According to Byars, women end up with injuries and on workers compensation.

The MTA disputes this.

Byars is hoping to unseat TWU President Tony Utano next year.

In the last union contract, ratified in January, the MTA and union agreed to discuss accommodations for pregnant women. But then COVID hit, and the group never met.

Until Williams lost her baby.

As a result of several meetings this summer the MTA has agreed to create a liaison in each department who will work with employees to find accommodations. And it agreed to put up new posters with a phone number to a hotline that actually works.

The MTA disputes it agreed to these terms, but several people in the meeting confirmed it. As of Monday, the MTA has not updated the phone number or made the liaison contact information public for workers.

In a statement, the MTA wrote, that New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg created a task force in July and is “focused on reviewing and improving upon our current process and procedures, and we are working closely with our TWU partners to make sure our frontline managers are aware and reminded of all requirements and options available to them when assisting these employees.”

Williams said she’s glad to hear the MTA will make it easier for pregnant women to get accommodations, but she wishes it would have happened sooner.

“Why did me and my kid have to be sacrificial lambs for you guys to realize that you all should've been did that?” she said.

She said she’s been unable to sleep much since she lost her baby, and she’s not sure when she’ll feel well enough to go back to work again.