Working mothers everywhere cheered when news broke earlier this year that a little-known aspect of health care reform legislation would grant protections to working mothers and ensure that they are provided with time and resources to pump breast milk during the work day.

Turns out, while the amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act grants these protections to many working women, one important segment of the workforce is left out of the protections – those so-called exempt employees, executive-level workers who receive a salary rather than an hourly wage.

The legislation puts companies in a difficult position and threatens to alienate a valuable segment of their workforce, says Audrey Mross, who heads the Labor and Employment practice at Dallas’ Munck Carter. “No matter the law, companies need to ask themselves whether they really want to risk angering some of the more powerful, successful women in the building,” Mross says.  “I don’t know if that’s a policy they want to follow.” A recent USA Today article published some general information from a “Fact Sheet” the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division released that states:

•Employers must provide "reasonable break time" for an employee to express breast milk. Advocates say nursing mothers need about a half-hour break for every four hours worked.

•Employers must be flexible as far as the timing and length of breaks needed by nursing mothers to express milk. Although a bathroom is not a permissible space, employers don't need a dedicated lactation center, as long as a suitable temporary space is available when needed by a nursing mother. Companies with fewer than 50 workers don't have to give breast-feeding breaks if they can show that doing so would impose an "undue hardship."