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Case studies

As a top national employment law firm, acting exclusively for employees, we have a high turnover of cases. Our leading Discrimination Unit has identified that pregnancy-related discrimination cases fall into five broad categories:

We have provided brief case studies of some of the claims we have handled, under these five categories:

MADE REDUNDANT DUE TO MATERNITY / DISMISSALS
i. We acted for a pregnant woman employed by a property company at the time of a business transfer.  She discovered that she was the only employee whose contract wasn't transferred to the new business, because of her pregnancy.  This meant she was the only employee who would be out of a job.  The company added insult to injury when they explained it to her with the words, "Obviously, you won't be transferred", as if pregnant women couldn't be expected to have the same rights as other employers.  We managed to settle the claim on behalf of our client without going to tribunal.

ii. A manager at a major national law firm was dismissed whilst on maternity leave following a sham redundancy procedure.  She was advised that her role had been made redundant but that she could apply for an alternative vacancy, for which she would have to compete with her temporary maternity cover.  This was for a position identical in all but name.  Our client stated that she believed the positions were the same, and refused to apply on that basis.  We succeeded in settling her claim for a substantial sum.

iii. In another case, our client, who was employed by a major UK charity, was called to a meeting at the end of her maternity leave and told that the charity did not want her back.  They gave her no explanation for this.  She did a job share and the other person sharing the job remained in place.  The circumstances were very distressing for our client.  However, we were able to secure her a very substantial settlement, by way of compensation.

iv. In another claim of discrimination on the basis that the redundancy was due to pregnancy, we issued tribunal proceedings on behalf of our client.  The Employment Tribunal ruled in favour of our client on the basis that she had been discriminated against due to pregnancy, because her employer had made no efforts to find her suitable alternative employment despite knowing she was pregnant.

This was a particularly good win in difficult circumstances, since the decision to dismiss our client had been made prior to her announcing her pregnancy.

v. We recently acted for a City analyst who experienced discrimination following her maternity leave.  On her return, she discovered that some of her duties had been transferred to other colleagues, as a result of which she was limited in the amount of work she could generate.  She complained, but nothing was done about it.  Rather, only six months later, she was selected for redundancy over the person her work had been transferred to, on the basis that she had generated less work.  We threatened proceedings for sex discrimination,  unfair dismissal and the non-payment of her bonus.  We achieved settlement on all counts without going to court. 

DISCRIMINATION FOLLOWING ANNOUNCEMENT OF PREGNANCY
vi. 5 months into her pregnancy, our client went into labour.  Sadly, after 4 excruciating days in labour, she experienced a stillbirth.  Despite the distressing circumstances of her sickness absence, our client's Managing Director began to harass her to accept a promotion, involving considerable additional responsibilities from the day of her return.

He then continued to bully her over the forthcoming months, making implied threats to sack her and cruel references to her miscarriage.  When our client was fortunate to become pregnant once again, the following year, her employers continued to subject her to derogatory comments and other detriments.  For example, our client received only statutory maternity pay when other colleagues had continued on full pay throughout their maternity leave.

The company then refused our client's reasonable request to return to work on a part-time basis, when her colleagues supported the business case she had put forward.   Our client had a massive fight on her hands to get her employers to even consider the part time working, she was met with brick walls all the time.  They refused to listen to reason and even consider what she was saying - eventually they paid lip service to a response to her request but she felt that they never genuinely considered it and it was never going to be granted despite excellent business reasons in support of her request. 

We argued our client's claim before the employment tribunal.  Despite evidential difficulties in relation to the comments our client had alleged were made by her boss, the tribunal found in her favour, stating "such insensitivity on the part of any employee is crass but on the part of a Managing Director it is unforgivable."  We succeeded in securing victory and a significant settlement for our client in this claim for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination.

vii. In another claim of maternity-related sex discrimination at a well known City bank, we managed to resolve the dispute with the employee retaining her job. In this case, our client found that she had no proper duties when she returned from maternity leave. We were able to take advantage of our knowledge and experience in pursuing matters through internal grievance procedures to achieve a result satisfactory to both sides, with our client remaining in employment.

viii. Our client was employed by a music company, and had enjoyed a successfully progressing career up until she announced her pregnancy.  From that point on, treatment changed, and she was subjected to bullying treatment involving derogatory comments and being ostracised by her colleagues, until she was eventually forced out of her job.  This case highlights the additional difficulties faced by pregnant women who bring discrimination claims.  By the time of the trial, our client had given birth and was caring for a two-month old child.  She succeeded in her claim for unfair dismissal.

ix. We also ran a successful tribunal claim for a probationary police officer who was told she could only do office work if she was pregnant.

REFUSAL TO RETURN PART-TIME FOLLOWING MATERNITY LEAVE
x. IT employee discriminated against from date of pregnancy.  It became clear that she was no longer considered a valuable and reliable member of the team as a result of becoming pregnant.  Following her taking maternity leave, there was resistance to allowing her to return on part-time hours.  The IT company refused to negotiate.  She lodged a claim for constructive dismissal, which eventually settled out of court.  She succeeded in recovering compensation for indirect sex discrimination and loss of earnings arising from unfair dismissal.

xi. Police officer was told she would not be allowed to work part-time following her pregnancy.  This was a claim for indirect sex discrimination which was settled before trial.

xii. We recently acted for another female police officer in a successful claim for at the Employment Tribunal.  Our client found that her child care responsibilities prevented her from performing her on-call duties.  The tribunal agreed with us that it was indirect sex discrimination to impose such on-call requirements, and that the force had not justified the discriminatory treatment.  This was an important victory at tribunal, since our client had worked in the murder, the major crime branch.  If even working in the murder branch was not enough to justify the requirement of 24/7 availability, it is hard to see when such hours could ever be justified.

NB Case (vi) above is also a good illustration of a typical negative/ unconstructive approach to these types of requests by companies.  We hope that the result would encourage other female employees not to be put off by an initial refusal by the company and to continue to fight their corner if inadequate reasons for refusing these requests are given.

DENIED ENTITLEMENTS WHILE ON MATERNITY LEAVE
xiii. We acted for a woman who was advised that she would have to take her maternity leave as sick leave.  The claim was settled with the recovery of all the maternity pay owed to our client.

HEALTH & SAFETY
xiv. We acted in a multi-party action for a group of flight attendants who were suspended without pay after refusing on their doctor's advice to work on long-distance flights while pregnant.  Their employer was a US airline.  The airline attempted to rely on the protection afforded by US law, but the Tribunal took the view that the employment relationship as a whole was much more closely connected to Britain and the flight attendants had been the victims of unlawful sex discrimination.