A new mom working at Trader Joe’s in Queens says the supermarket chain provided only a mechanical room to pump her breast milk, then retaliated against her by pulling her heath care coverage after she complained to management, according to a new federal lawsuit.
Julia Hammer, 42, alleges that the chain flouted city law requiring employers to provide clean, secure lactation rooms, instead making her settle for “a dirty, multipurpose mechanical room that lacked a suitable lock,” according to a lawsuit filed against Trader Joe’s Tuesday in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Hammer alleges she didn’t have the privacy she needed, leaving her “tense and on-edge,” and in November 2021, a male manager walked in on her despite a sign showing the room was in use.
“It was scary. It was jarring,” she told the Daily News on Wednesday. “It felt like the one moment I could kind of relax and focus on what I needed to do, that was no longer a safe space. Postpartum is a very sensitive time already … It kind of put me over the edge.”
To make things worse, the store changed its policy and factored her maternity leave into whether she was a full-time employee — then booted her off the store’s health care coverage because she hadn’t worked enough hours that year, according to the lawsuit.
“It’s almost as if they rewrote the definition of what a full-time employee was to fit their needs. And, you know, it’s unclear to us why they thought they could do that,” Hammer’s lawyer, Hilary Orzick, said. “I’m not sure how many other people who had taken protective leave were affected by this.”
Trader Joe’s did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.
Hammer was working at the chain’s Lower East Side location when she and her wife learned she was pregnant in July 2020, according to her lawsuit.
Her manager was supportive, she said, but no one at Trader Joe’s provided her with any real information about her rights or options on the job, she said.
“As my pregnancy progressed, it felt like a don’t ask, don’t tell situation — almost like, you know, if I needed something, I would kind of have to just do it and ask for forgiveness if I got in trouble.”
She gave birth to a boy in April 2021 and went on maternity leave until August, when she started working in Trader Joe’s newly-constructed Long Island City store.
Despite the building being new— and despite city law — the store had no lactation station for employees, she said.
“This mechanical room did not have a table on which she could set a breast pump, there was no sink or access to running water, there was no refrigerator, and there was no suitable lock on the door,” the lawsuit alleges. “Furthermore, the room was dusty and appeared as though it had not been cleaned in weeks.”
Often, she said, she tried to use the room, only to find it already in use, forcing her to wait for another opportunity in her shift — and leaving her with pain.
In November 2021, the same month a manager walked in on her pumping, she found out about the change in her health care.
“It was like, almost the end of the year, so it didn’t really give us much time, or ability to do anything about it,” she said. She wound up quitting soon after.
“I’m hoping for Trader Joe’s to take responsibility for what they did, what they didn’t do, and moving forward to amend or to provide these spaces so that other people breast feeding don’t have to go through what I went through,” Hammer said.
