£15,000 payout for pregnant clerk whose boss said: You’ve had some fun
A FINANCE worker has won a £15,000 payout after her male boss said she ‘must have been having some fun lately’ when she told him she was pregnant.
Company director George Dodds initially ignored Bianca King when she told him she was expecting before making the inappropriate comment alluding to her sex life.
He then informed her that she was being sacked. But the court heard Mr Dodds withdrew the dismissal when Miss King told him she had planned to start her maternity leave four months later, telling her: ‘That changes everything. I did not know it was so soon.’
Over the following months Mr Dodds, who runs Northampton-based firm Mortgage Compare, started shouting at the processing clerk and once reduced her to tears after criticising her in front of colleagues. Miss King, now 31, from Kettering, Northamptonshire, said his treatment left her so stressed before the birth of her first child in March 2019 that she had to see her GP about her mounting anxiety.
After giving birth to her daughter Winter Ivy, now three, Miss King claimed she was told she was being made selfemployed – and might not be entitled to maternity leave.
The tribunal heard that Miss King, a single parent who now works as an administrator, never returned to the company.
The Cambridge tribunal has now ruled she was the victim of pregnancy discrimination and has awarded her £15,010 in compensation.
Employment Judge Martin Bloom said: ‘These acts of unfavourable treatment were carried out by [Mr Dodds] because [Miss King] had advised them that she was pregnant... No lawful or indeed any plausible alternative exists.’
Miss King, who started working at the company in 2016, said: ‘I had never had an issue at the company until I told George I was pregnant. After that, everything changed.
‘They told me that by going selfemployed I would not be entitled to maternity pay and it went on from there.
‘The treatment I received was disgusting. I couldn’t go back there.’
‘Treatment I received was disgusting’