Woman sacked while pregnant wins £65k payout
A woman who was sacked while pregnant because she took days off with morning sickness has been awarded £65,000 in compensation. Maya Georgiev was in the early stages of her pregnancy when she started suffering from “dizzy spells” and vomiting while working for Hanover Insolvency Limited, an Employment Tribunal heard.
The panel were told she raised it with two colleagues as she was worried about not passing her probationary period but told them to not tell anyone about the pregnancy. She later told the Head of HR she was just six weeks pregnant and did not want to tell anyone as she had had a miscarriage before, the Tribunal heard.
Mrs Geogiev was signed off for two weeks, the hearing held in Manchester was told. When she returned to work on the final day of her probationary period, she was called in for a meeting with Daniel Morris, the Consulting Managing Director, who told her that if staff were off sick they were not making him money and dismissed her.
Mr Morris told the Tribunal Mrs Geogiev was to work from home on a self-employed basis but not as an employee. Pregnancy is one of nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act.
Mrs Geogiev later wrote a letter to the company appealing her dismissal, which read:
“I feel I have been dismissed solely on the fact that I am pregnant, at no point has my performance been questioned, this was purely due to my sickness absence. I am sure if I had been dismissed on performance I would not have been given the opportunity to work on a self-employed basis.”
Mrs Geogiev later suffered a miscarriage, the Tribunal heard. In December 2018 she began suffering from severe depression and then suffered another miscarriage. A letter written by her GP was read at the hearing, which said:
“According to Maya her symptoms have gotten worse since she had an incident in her previous job where she was sacked, that put a lot of stress on her and she is not managing well ever since.”
The Tribunal concluded it was the combination of Mrs Geogiev’s dismissal by Hanover Insolvency and the first miscarriage which led to her “feeling so bad”.
Judge Slater said:
“Without the acts of discrimination, we consider it unlikely Mrs Geogiev would have suffered so severely. She acknowledged she was upset by the miscarriage, as we would expect would be the case. However, miscarriage is very common in the early stages of pregnancy and, had it not been for the effects of the discrimination, we consider it likely she would not have reached the depths of depression which she did.
"We find, on a balance of probabilities, that, whatever the exact words used were, Daniel Morris made it clear to Mrs Geogiev within moments of the meeting stating that he was dismissing her. After being told she was pregnant and her absences were pregnancy related, he then confirmed she was being dismissed and that the reason for this was because of her absences."
Mrs Geogiev will be awarded £64,783 as compensation by Hanover Insolvency for "loss of earnings and injury to feelings".
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