taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (01/15/87)
This article is from the VOGON News Service, #1236: Pregnant Women - Banned from AT&T production lines AT&T has banned pregnant women from semiconductor production lines in response to a study finding high miscarriage rates in certain chip-making jobs, the company confirmed Tuesday. The company, which has 4,000 production workers at five chip plants in Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida, is believed to be the nation's first semiconductor manufacturer to impose such a ban. Other companies encourage women to leave the production area when they become pregnant, but do not require it, Sheila Sandow, a spokeswoman for the Semiconductor Industry Association in Cupertino, Calif., said Tuesday. "It was precautionary. We don't know the full extent of the situation, so we felt this was an appropriate action," said Lydia Whitefield, spokeswoman for AT&T Technology Systems in Berkeley Heights, N.J. The company said 15 pregnant women at the plants have been transferred, all of them willingly, since the policy started last month. AT&T is guaranteeing new jobs at comparable pay and benefits for pregnant chip production workers. The industry study was conducted by University of Massachusetts researchers at the DEC chip plant in Hudson, Mass. Looking at 770 workers between 1980 and 1985, it found that women on chip production lines suffered twice the miscarriage rate of other women at the plant. DEC guarantees comparable jobs to women who decide to leave production jobs when they become pregnant, and has since before the University of Massachusetts study, company spokesman Jeff Gibson said. Since the study came out, the company has begun offering free pregnancy tests for employees, he said. The Semiconductor Industry Association is scheduled to meet later this month with researchers from the Digital Equipment study. --