By Zaidee Stavely, August 8, 2019
When her son Quincy was six weeks old, Lynette Stewart dropped him off at a child care center in Long Beach, California and headed back to work, with a hard ball of worry in her chest.
“I cried my eyes out, especially that first week of leaving him there,” Stewart said. “No one wants to take their baby, who can’t communicate, to a stranger at that age.”
At the time, in 2015, Stewart was working as an administrative assistant at a small company that made kombucha, a fermented tea. She was raising her two boys, Quincy and his teenage brother, alone while earning just $17 an hour — about $35,360 a year. Stewart had taken the six weeks of partially paid disability leave available to mothers in California after they give birth. She was also eligible for an additional six weeks off, as paid family leave, but that leave would also be only partially paid and she couldn’t afford the continued cut to her income.
She was also afraid she might lose her job. Because she was working for a small company with fewer than 20 employees, she had no job protection under California or federal law.
“The six weeks was already pretty frowned upon by my boss,” Stewart said. “He let me know he wasn’t happy.” She said he questioned her about how long she would be gone and asked her what the company was supposed to do to fill her position during her absence.
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