Iberia announced on Monday that it will stop requiring pregnancy tests from women who apply to work for the Spanish airline.
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Iberia announced on Monday that it will stop requiring pregnancy tests from women who apply to work for the Spanish airline after it was fined 25,000 euros by Spain’s Balearic Islands which ruled the practice was discriminatory.
In a press release, the airline said it had never not hired a woman for being pregnant and that the tests were routinely done to protect the health of women who were expecting a child.
“There are very strict protocols for the protection of pregnant women on staff, which also applies to applicants, not to assign tasks that could endanger their health and that of the fetus,” Iberia said in a statement on Monday.
Spanish airline Iberia to end pregnancy tests as part of recruitment https://t.co/VemmrcMVRL
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However, “taking into account the sensitivity generated by the current protocol for the protection of pregnant women, we will no longer include the pregnancy test at the medical admission examination,” said Dr. María Teresa García Menéndez, Labor Prevention Manager at Iberia.
The airline gave the example that currently 32 cabin crew members were not flying because they were pregnant, in line with regulations that prohibits all crew from flying who are pregnant.
Iberia said 46 percent of the workforce is female, a percentage that rises to 71 percent in the case of cabin crew.
The union UGT said that a woman has no obligation to report a possible pregnancy when she applies for a job.
Iberia merged with British Airways in 2011 to form International Airlines Group.