Boss 'pressurised' mother to work 12 days after birth of premature boy, tribunal hears
A boss at a printing firm contacted a female employee 12 days after the premature birth of her baby boy and pressurised her to work from home during her maternity leave.
That is according to the mother, and in the case, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has ordered the employer to pay the woman €20,000 after finding that she was discriminated against on the grounds of gender and constructively dismissed.
In the ruling, WRC Adjudication Officer, David Mullis has ordered the employer to pay the woman €10,000 after upholding the mother’s claim that she was penalised for proposing to exercise her parental leave rights and being discriminated against on the grounds of gender when her employer failed to consider her for promotion while on maternity leave.
In the second part of the ruling, Mr Mullis also ordered that the firm pay €10,000 over the worker’s claim that she was constructively dismissed under the Unfair Dismissals Acts.
The woman told the WRC hearing that four months prior to giving birth when she told her boss that she was pregnant with her second child, he told her that he hoped “her two men will help you handle your two kids”.
The woman - who worked in the firm’s Quality Assurance department - said her boss’s comment was a reference to the fact that her two children would have different fathers.
She said that her boss was not happy that she was pregnant.
The woman gave birth to her second baby - a baby boy - 29 weeks into her pregnancy after being rushed from work to hospital in late August 2016.
She said that on September 6, 2016, 12 days after the birth, her boss contacted her and pressurised her to work from home due to there being no one on site to manage audits.
The woman said she was placed under significant pressure to comply and ultimately agreed to work from home as she was concerned that her employer may dismiss her if she refused to do so.
She said that this requirement to work from home meant working four hours per day for periods across the entire length of her maternity leave.
The woman told the WRC that the work “placed an incredible volume of upset, exhaustion and distress on her as she was required to perform this role while providing intensive levels of care for her significantly premature baby, requiring incubation, as well as caring for her three-year-old son”.
However, the company’s boss provided a conflicting account.
He said that the female employee asked on May 5, 2016, to work during her maternity leave and that she was given the work because she said that she needed money; was bored hanging around to check that the baby was in an incubator and that she was alone.
The woman said that after she announced her pregnancy the atmosphere in the organisation change towards her. She said that she was isolated and made to feel that she had done something wrong.
The woman said that while on maternity leave in April 2017, her boss promoted a colleague to the role of Quality Manager and that she was never informed that such a vacancy existed.
The woman raised a grievance over this. She resigned in June 2017 after stating that her employer’s actions had destroyed the woman’s trust in her employer and she had no option but to resign.
