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CNN Live Today

Motherhood Penalty?; Three Killed in Nasiriya

Aired May 03, 2006 - 11:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: You can't put a price tag on a mother's love. And frankly, we wouldn't really try to do that. But a new study does try to calculate how much mothers should earn for all that they do. According to salary.com, a full-time stay at home mother would earn more than $134,000 a year if she were paid for all of her work. And a mother who works outside the home earned an extra $85,876 a year. That's for the work she does when she gets home. Researchers looked at the earning power of the jobs that closely resemble a mom's role. Those include housekeeper, day care, teacher, cook, laundry lady, janitor, driver, chief executive and, of course, let's not forget psychologist.
Many moms can tell you it can be a job just keeping your job once you have the kids. Some mothers who returned to work after babies say they are paying a penalty. Our Paula Zahn talked to two women who took action.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIA PANELY-PAGETTI, NEW MOTHER: I waited to get pregnant until I was 34 years old, until my career was on track, until my income was in place so that I had the resources to support a child.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Julia was a corporate communications executive in New York City making almost a six figure salary. In four years at her company she says she received three promotions and four raises. But her professional success took an unexpected turn when she got pregnant.

(on camera): Put this all into context for us. Here you are a worker who was called the favorite employee. And suddenly, you found yourself frozen out.

PANELY-PAGETTI: I went from being the right-hand person to my boss, a very close relationship where we'd be on the phone sometimes ten different calls a day, working on things of the highest priority to not being able to even get my boss on the phone or not being able to ask them a question. And I felt that it really was because they didn't know how to deal with my pregnancy.

ZAHN (voice-over): Julia encouraged her bosses to find a temporary replacement during her maternity leave but also agreed to take calls in emergency situations. But just days after baby Chloe's birth, Julia's bosses began contacting her to work on major projects.

(on camera): At times there were more than a dozen phone calls and e-mails a day, sometimes as late as 11:00 at night. What did you think the message your bosses were sending you, to flood you with that kind of work while you're out on maternity leave?

PANELY-PAGETTI: One of the heads of the company, he put it to me very plainly and said, you need to tell us whether you're willing to give 100 percent, because if you're not, we need to figure out a way to do it without you.

ZAHN: Did you interpret that as a threat?

PANELY-PAGETTI: Yes, I did.

ZAHN (voice-over): Threat or not, in the next conversation with her bosses, Julia was told she was among a handful of people being laid off. She was still on maternity leave.

(on camera): How devastating was it for you to lose your job when Chloe was two and a half months old?

PANELY-PAGETTI: Economically, more than anything, just devastating. And we lost our home and we had to move in to my grandfather's apartment with our young baby. And we're still living here today.

ZAHN (voice-over): Julia thinks she was fired because she became a mother. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission it's illegal to lay off or fire a woman during her maternity leave, except in case of corporate downsizing.

The tricky part is proving that the pregnancy or motherhood had anything to do with the decision. But Julia is determined to pursue her case. She's suing her company for employment discrimination. Her lawyer, Gary Phelan.

GARY PHELAN, JULIA'S ATTORNEY: She didn't work hard enough during her pregnancy leave. That's what led to her being terminated.

ZAHN: Julia is far from alone. According to the Center for Work Life Law, there has been an increase of more than 400 percent in these kinds of cases in last decade.

PHELAN: What's at the heart of a lot of these cases is a stereotype, the assumption that you can't do both, you can't be a parent and you can't be a good employee.

ZAHN: Elana Back was confronted with this stereotype in of all places a school where her bosses were women. She's a school psychologist in suburban New York. And she says she was intimidated and ultimately fired when she returned to work after her maternity leave.

(on camera): So Elana give us an example of some of the outrageous thing you were told by your female bosses.

ELANA BACK, SUED FOR EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION: Please don't get pregnant again until I retire. Another thing that was said to me was, we think your performance is just an act. We just don't know how you can maintain this level of performance when we know you have little ones at home.

ZAHN (voice-over): Alana sued and went to trial. And although she lost her case, she paved the way for other women like Julia. Today it's Alana's case lawyers cite when arguing this kind of discrimination in the workplace.

(on camera): If you had to go back and do it all over again, it was worth fighting this, getting fired?

BACK: It was absolutely worth it. Because I can go now for the rest of my life and know that I stood up for something I believed in.

ZAHN (voice-over): Some called what happened to Julia and Alana the maternal wall.

SHELLEY CORRELL, PHD, CORNELL UNIVERSITY SOCIOLOGIST: It's a similar kind of metaphor to a glass ceiling.

Cornell professor Shelly Correll recently conducted a study to test how prospective employers view motherhood. She sent more than 300 pairs of resumes to employers of two women with comparable qualifications with one exception. One of the women was obviously a mother. The women without children received twice as many call backs as those with children.

CORRELL: People seem to stereotype mothers as being less committed to their jobs, once they rate them as being less committed to their job, then they're less likely to desire them as employees, or less likely to promote them, to offer them lower salaries and the like.

THOMAS COLEMAN, EXEC. DIR., UNMARRIED AMERICA: A person with children is going to say I've got to go. There's no baby-sitter, I've got to go.

ZAHN (voice-over): Tom Coleman, the executive director of Unmarried America, a nonprofit advocacy group, believes employers are justified in being skeptical of working mothers.

COLEMAN: Working women with children want to have their cake and eat it, too. I want to have a full family life. I want to have kids but I also want to have a full career. If you put too much on your plate, things are going to fall off.

ZAHN (on camera): Do you have any sensitivity at all to the mind-set your employer might have had, the concern perhaps that you would never be able to put in the kind of 14, 16-hour days you often pulled for them?

PANELY-PAGETTI: There's a big gap, Paula, between thinking those things and making assumptions that somebody isn't going to work hard. I overcompensated by showing how dedicated I was.

ZAHN (voice-over): Alana also feels that she overcompensated and worked even harder when she went back to her job. She now works part time at another school. But with a termination on her record, she says it's hard for her to get a full time job.

As for Julia, she's been actively looking for a new job, but says that interviews come to a screeching halt when she answered the question, how did you leave your last job. She now does some part time PR consulting from home with baby Chloe in to you.

(on camera): Do you feel that the 15 years you put in, that this kind of work was all for naught now?

PANELY-PAGETTI: I feel like I'm starting from scratch. I feel like I have worked really, really hard, and I have been really dedicated to my career and to every company that I've worked for.

BACK: I want to have another child. I'm 36 now. You know, if I'm going to do that I want to do that soon. But I can't do that until I move out of my grandfather's house and get back on my feet.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: CNN contacted the school system where Elana Back was employed. They declined to comment for the story. Julia's lawsuit is proceeding. The company she worked for denies her allegation and gave us this statement, quote: "Although the company does not generally comment on pending litigation, they deny the allegations in the complaint and are vigorously defending the lawsuit." This battle is far from over.

You can see more stories like this on "PAULA ZAHN NOW," weeknights 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific, here on CNN.

FEMA and New Orleans, they are at odds again. The agency is closing up shop at one of its recovery offices. Find out why on CNN LIVE TODAY.

It is one of life's embarrassing moments. A Wal-Mart shopper and a toilet seat make headlines. That story is coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: We have breaking news out of Iraq. Carol Lin has details from our breaking news desk -- Carol.

CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, the British military is reporting that a U.S. civilian contractor has been killed, along with two other people, in Nasiriya. This is south of Baghdad. Daryn, what is significant about this is that Nasiriya actually has some reconstruction projects going on. It is a Shiite city not patrolled by the U.S.; considered, though, relatively safe in the world of violence in Iraq. So the fact that a U.S. contractor here and two others were killed by a roadside bomb indicates more violence in an area that was at least considered somewhat safe to do actually some reconstruction in that country.

KAGAN: All right. We'll be following with more details coming in from Iraq.

LIN: You bet.

KAGAN: Carol, thank you.

Charges of being abandoned by the government again? That is what some city leaders in New Orleans are saying about a decision by FEMA. The disaster agency set up emergency operations shortly after Hurricane Katrina. That was followed by an office for long-term recovery. Well, now FEMA says it's closing that office. The reason? FEMA complains that local officials haven't done their part in planning the city's recovery.

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: And we're talking about job burnout, which I don't think you can actually claim, because didn't you just get back from some boys trip?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: A hundred and four holes of golf in 72 hours.

KAGAN: That's what I thought. OK, but before you went...

MYERS: Yes.

KAGAN: ... you might have been thinking some job burnout. Well, new survey out on this. Careerbuilder.com finding that more than half of workers are under a great deal of stress. Chad, 77 percent say they're burned out. What do you think the main factors are?

MYERS: Listening to Jimmy Buffett?

KAGAN: Oh, we love Jimmy!

MYERS: Of course we do. Actually, I just...

KAGAN: Here's our list.

MYERS: Alan Jackson, too, right?

KAGAN: Difficult -- yes. It's 5:00 somewhere. Difficult co- workers, an unrealistic workload, tight deadlines.

MYERS: That's kind of us.

KAGAN: Does that sound like anybody you know?

MYERS: Yes.

KAGAN: Last-minute projects and an overbearing, interfering boss. Do you want to claim that?

MYERS: I have a great boss.

KAGAN: OK, but here's some tips, just in case you are burning out for dealing...

MYERS: Take a deep breath. Take a vacation.

KAGAN: Go on a boys' golf trip.

Organize and prioritize your tasks. Set reasonable short-term and long-term goals. Take care of yourself, Chad.

MYERS: Yes, go to the gym. Like I could talk.

KAGAN: Enough sleep and good nutrition. Yes. I don't think that happens at home where you have the baby, this job, or you have early wake-up.

MYERS: Starbucks and Diet Coke, is that good nutrition? I don't know.

KAGAN: I don't think there was good nutrition happening on that boys' trip, either.

MYERS: No, not too much.

KAGAN: No, I don't think so. Thanks for participating. Glad you had a good boys' trip.

MYERS: We did.

(MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: Still ahead, a match not made in heaven; it was made in a Wal-Mart. A Wal-Mart shopper and a toilet seat get together and can't get apart. We'll have that story for you just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Oh, a man in Maryland won't forget his sticky situation any time soon. He was stuck to a toilet seat at a Wal-Mart store, really. Both he and the seat had to take a trip to the hospital.

The story from Beth Parker. She's with affiliate WTTG.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH PARKER, WTTG REPORTER: Look before you sit. Strange advice, but good advice when there's a glue-toting criminal on the loose.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think there's some pretty sick people out in the world to do something as strange as that.

PARKER: What the person did is leave glue on a toilet seat at this Salisbury Wal-Mart store. The shopper got help only after a store employee entered the bathroom and heard the 20-year-old man pounding on the stall door.

(on camera): Now the fire department responded here to the Wal- Mart. They didn't just transport the patient, though; they transported the toilet seat, too. That had to be removed at the hospital.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a lot to get it off.

PARKER: People around town are talking about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought my buddy was nuts.

PARKER: (on camera): You didn't think it was true?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

PARKER (voice-over): What may seem like a prank is no joke to police. Back on April Fool's day a similar incident happened here at a Denny's restaurant a few miles from the Wal-Mart. That time a 39- year-old man was the victim.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's not funny. We do take it seriously.

PARKER: So seriously the person responsible could go to jail. In Maryland, the maximum jail time for a second-degree assault charge is ten years.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We don't want any copycats; we don't want this occurring again.

PARKER: Don't want anybody else stuck in the same situation.

In Salisbury, Beth Parker, Fox 5 News.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Interesting way to wrap up of hour.

I'm Daryn Kagan. International news is up next. Stay tuned for "YOUR WORLD TODAY," and then I'll be back with the latest headlines from the U.S. in about 20 minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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