2016届高考英语高分冲刺特训听力素材3（word版）16_高考复习指南

2016届高考英语高分冲刺特训听力素材3（word版）16

　　Today in the Supreme Court of the United States, a case involving maternity leave: at issue whether states may require employers to guarantee that pregnant workers are able to return to their jobs after a limited period of unpaid disability leave. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports.

　　Nice states already have laws or regulations that require all employers to protect the jobs of workers who are disabled by pregnancy or childbirth. Depending on what the Supreme Court rules in the case it heard today, those laws will either die or flourish. The test case is from California. It began with Lillian Garland, the receptionist at California Federal Savings and Loan. In 1982, she returned to work after having a child and found she had no job.

　　"After working for California Federal for over three and a half years, I was told at that time they no longer had a position available for me. My question was, 'Well, what about the job that I've had for so many years?' And they said, 'We hired the person that you trained in your place.' I was in shock."

　　Officials at California Federal say Garland should not have been surprised, that she'd been told at the time she took pregnancy leave that her job was not guaranteed. But the fact is that California law requires all employers in the state to provide up to four months' disability leave for pregnant workers. The leave time is unpaid, and it is only a available to women who, because of pregnancy or childbirth, are physically unable to work. The law does require that such workers get back the same job unless business necessity makes that impossible. So when Lillian Garland was told she couldn't have her old job back, she filed discrimination charges against the bank. The bank then challenged the California pregnancy disability law in court, claiming that the state law amounted to illegal sex discrimination. The bank's reasoning went like this: Federal law bans discrimination in employment based on pregnancy, but the state law mandates disability leave to women for pregnancy while denying the same leave time to men who are disabled by other ailments, such as heart attacks and strokes. California counters that the state law does not discriminate between men and women, that it treats them both the same as to all ailments, but grants disability leave only to pregnant workers. Moreover, California argues that the state law in fact equalizes the situation between man and woman, allowing them both to have children without losing their jobs. The pregnancy disability case has produced some strange bedfellows. The Reagan Administration is siding with the California business community in arguing that federal law requires no special treatment for pregnancy. Many of the major national women's organizations agree, but argue that the way to cure the problem is to give everybody unpaid disability leave in case of illness. Other women's organizations, particularly in California, argue that singling out pregnancy for special treatment is not sex discrimination. Feminist Betty Friedan defends the California law.