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A Japan Airlines (JAL) female flight attendant who filed a lawsuit against the company after she was ordered to take a leave of absence following her pregnancy has reached a settlement with the airline.
In 2014, Tomoko Jinno, 42, learned she was pregnant and requested to be transferred to ground duties. However, Jinno said that the company ordered her to take a temporary leave of absence and stay home, Fuji TV reported. She said that after she declined to do so, she was subjected to pregnancy discrimination. Subsequently, Jinno sued JAL for “maternity harassment” for rejecting her request for light duties during the duration of her pregnancy.
The settlement now states that all JAL flight attendants who apply for ground duties will be granted their request. A company spokesperson said, “We hope to take the initiative in continuing to improve our organization in the future.”
© Japan Today
14 Comments
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paradoxbox
Stupid dinosaur airline. The bankruptcy didn't fix a thing in the stupid management's head.
Yubaru
JAL is an example of many industries and major corporations, they pay lip service to the needs of their staff and toss them under the bus when they are done with them!
dcog9065
This is pretty serious. This implies that they kept her in "heavy" duties during her pregnancy, that could have resulted in higher stress, worse body health, injury, etc., which could have had extremely adverse effects on the unborn baby. Hopefully there weren't any complications otherwise the settlement likely would have been considerable.
I do wonder how much the settlement was in the end though
Rashadoz
I know what is Japan when it comes to term ( Harassment )- my sleeping pills can tell me about it !
NZ2011
Probably much like the other terrible airline story of forcing the disabled man to crawl up the stairs Im guessing this largely stems from the real issue of people being not being able or encouraged to think creatively, quickly and be responsible for decisions in Japanese companies.
There probably wasn't an existing policy for such a situation so rather than work something out the only "solution" was to keep doing your job or go on leave.
YongYang
The GGs take a hit again. Well done that woman!
Laguna
I'm not an obstetrician, but something tells me that standing for hours in a narrow space under relatively high radiation and subject to unexpected turbulence while carrying a fetus is not... uh, ... good.
thepersoniamnow
Shameful! Good for her for sticking up for her rights. It's not an easy thing for Japanese people to do.
juminRhee
How much money did she get? Did she even get an apology?
badman
I guess you could say this was a labor issue in more than one way.
afanofjapan
For the posters that suggested the company wanted her to continue working in the air:
They didnt want her working in the air, but they didnt offer her another role that she could do while pregnant. This could have been due to not having vacancies in that area (unlikely in company that size), or that this was just company policy. I guess it was the latter, decided by the older (and even not so older) Japanese men who couldnt even imagine that a woman would want to stay in the workforce once pregnant or after she had a child.
I guess she probably wont be able to go back to work there without further harassment or being known as a 'troublemaker' but, she (hopefully) paved the way for other employees to be offered appropriate work during pregnancy.
serendipitous1
Good on her for standing up to JAL and making the company change its policy.
mmwkdw
The Law is the Law. She, and her advisors were correct.
JAL is currently struggling to survive, and I would expect that they may not be around much longer.