MATERNITY RIGHTS AND PARENTAL LEAVE
The Claimant was on maternity leave while a redundancy exercise was being carried out. An important e-mail requiring her to fill in a redeployment document and return it to HR as soon as possible was sent to her work e-mail address which she was not accessing. As a result, she did not get notice of the e-mail or fill in the form for several days. Although this did not cause any substantial harm it caused her legitimate concern and the Employment Appeal Tribunal (‘EAT’) upheld the Employment Tribunal’s (‘ET’) finding that it amounted to ‘unfavourable treatment’. The ET also found that the unfavourable treatment was ‘because’ she was exercising her rights to maternity leave and thus amounted to discrimination under section 18(4) Equality Act 2010. The appeal in relation to this issue was allowed because the ET did not consider causation properly in the light of the decisions in Indigo design Build and Management Limited and Anor v Martinez (Sex discrimination: Direct) [2014] UKEAT/0020/14/0007 and Onu v Akwiwu and Another [2014] EWCA Civ 279. Although the unfavourable treatment would not have happened ‘but for’ the fact that the Claimant was on maternity leave, the ET had not considered whether this was the ‘reason why’ she had been treated unfavourably. There was no finding that the fact that she was on maternity leave had operated on the Respondent’s mind and there was no sufficient factual basis or analysis to support a finding that the Respondent had applied an inherently discriminatory criterion; in particular, the ET’s Judgment was not clear as to why the sender of the e-mail used only her work email address or why the Claimant did not have access to her work emails.
Citations:
[2018] UKEAT 0090 – 18 – 2211
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 31 May 2022; Ref: scu.634379