Yelp will pay employees to travel for access to abortions

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Once, questions about vaccine mandates or abortion access were not something that corporate leaders would have considered. Executives are increasingly being forced to take a stand on these divisive issues, as they are of vital importance to their customers and workers.

“I think that the question for these businesses is: Where do they want to locate?” Caitlin Mister, an economist at Middlebury College in Vermont, said. She has been studying the economic consequences of reproductive health policies. Do you want to locate in a country where women have extremely limited reproductive rights? Is it possible to recruit women there?

Yelp’s travel benefits are part of its long-term efforts to expand abortion access. The company stated that it will do more to ensure Yelp users understand the differences between “crisis pregnancy centers” and abortion clinics in 2018. This is to help people avoid terminating their pregnancy.

Yelp stated in a statement that “Our User Operations team manually screened more than 2,000 clinics and businesses to ensure accurate categorization.” The company pledged to double match employee donations to organizations fighting Texas’ abortion law last year.

According to Ms. Warren, Yelp employees can submit receipts for travel expenses directly through their insurance company under the new policy. She stated that no one at Yelp will ever know who accesses this information or how it was obtained. It will also be a reimbursement received directly through the insurance provider.

According to regulatory filings in 2020, Yelp’s median income was $92,000. Companies with higher salaries are more vocally opposed to restrictions on abortion. Professor Myers stated that these restrictions are disproportionately affected by lower-income women, who can’t afford extra travel or days off work to make the trip.

She said that “affluent women and those with college degrees aren’t the only ones who can’t travel.” “Those women will find a way for them to travel to legal places.”