Mia and her baby helped through difficult times

Discrimination service helps a client stand to up pregnancy-related discrimination

Our Civil Legal Advice Discrimination service deals with clients from across England and Wales who have been treated unfairly in their day-to-day lives. The team works hard to help clients seek justice for these discriminatory acts.

The case study below demonstrates how one of our advisers helped a client use the Equality Act 2010 to challenge discriminatory employment practices and gain compensation for their unfavourable treatment.

The client

Mia was a working parent with two children under the age of 5. She was in discussions with her manager about developing within the company and it was agreed that she would undertake training in a new area of the business.

Before this training began Mia became pregnant with her third child and advised her employer. They agreed that she would continue to undertake the training on her keeping in touch days whilst on maternity leave.

Mia was later informed by a friend that the company was advertising a full-time role in the new department, but she had not been advised of this as required. When she queried this she was told by her manager that they didn’t think this was suitable for her. Mia was told that a manager had stated that they did not want “a mum with young kids” in this role as they felt it would be too much for them to handle.

What we did

We took detailed instructions from Mia about what had happened and the impact on her and advised her about her legal rights.

We assisted her in making a claim to the employment tribunal and in preparing her case documents and arguments for the final hearing.

The claim was defended but Mia was able to establish to the satisfaction of the tribunal that failing to advise employees who were on maternity leave of internal vacancies was discriminatory as it caused a detriment to those unable to work due to pregnancy.

The tribunal also found that the comment made about Mia’s unsuitable for the role as a mum with young kids was discriminatory.

Mia was awarded £14,000.00 in compensation for these unlawful acts.

Our Impact

We helped our client to negotiate complex legal proceedings to a successful outcome, whereby she was compensated for losses suffered for discriminatory behaviour. This gave her some financial stability but also allowed her to move on from her unpleasant employment experience to pursue a successful career elsewhere.