The Equality Tribunal has awarded a former marketing manager €315,000 for discrimination and victimisation which occurred while she was employed by a well known hotel group.

The complainant alleged a series of events starting with her earlier pregnancies and culminating in the employer’s efforts to terminate her employment shortly after she informed her manager that she was pregnant with her third child. Immense pressure was placed on her to resign and this resulted in her taking leave due to work-related stress. The Tribunal found that the complainant was discriminatorily dismissed by way of a letter which stated that her P45 would issue on the same day that her maternity leave was due to commence. However, the Tribunal stated that had this not been the case, then the complainant’s claim for constructive dismissal would have succeeded.

The Equality Tribunal accepted that a number of the employer’s actions constituted harassment, victimisation and discrimination based on gender and family status within the meaning of the Employment Equality Acts, including:

• The pressure put on the complainant to take redundancy
• Disingenuously repackaging her termination as “early maternity leave”
• The refusal to pay the complainant her full maternity pay while she was on her third maternity leave, having been paid during her first and second pregnancies
• Blocking access to her fuel card and mobile phone without warning
• The unnecessary delay in reactivating her mobile phone following a request from her solicitors to do so

The scale of this award is partly due to the high salary which the complainant had enjoyed (€126,000 per annum), but should nevertheless serve to deter employers from engaging in unlawful discrimination.

Contributed by Louise Moore and Alicia Compton.

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