A female employee has received compensation of over £14,000 after her unfair dismissal claim was upheld by an Employment Tribunal.
A former employee of Key Promotions UK Ltd has been awarded a substantial pay-out after an Employment Tribunal found she was unfairly dismissed from her role.
Yuliaa Khimicheva joined the company in March 2019 and was on her probation period when she found out she was pregnant.
Due to illness related to her pregnancy, Ms. Khimicheva was forced to take a substantial amount of time off from her job.
However, when informing her manager of this, the claimant was allegedly told that her boss was “too busy” to handle organising her maternity leave.
A few weeks later, in late July, Ms. Khimicheva’s manager, wrote a letter, informing her that she was being dismissed by the company.
The letter stated:
As your production was lower than it should be after such time your attendance started to fall behind. As a result being very busy with work and your continued absence I have decided this job is not working for you or for the company.
During this meeting, Ms. Khimicheva told her manager that her condition did not affect her job performance. However, her manager allegedly responded by stating that the company was “not a charity organisation to pay for not enough work”.
Despite the manager stating she was unaware that Ms. Khimicheva was pregnant before dismissing her, Judge Street stated that her manager did have prior knowledge of her condition. This, the judge stated, would point to Ms. Khimicheva’s pregnancy indeed being a factor in the decision to fire her.
Judge Street further branded the letter as “inadequate” as well as “discourteous”, failing to address Ms. Khimicheva by her full name.
It found that the claimant was entitled to a statement of reasons for dismissal but said that the reasons given were “mentioned only briefly” and in the “most general terms”.
As such, the Employment Tribunal did find that Ms. Khimicheva had been discriminated against on the basis of her pregnancy and the illness that arose as part of this. Therefore, the Judge concluded that the employee had been unfairly dismissed by the company.
Ms. Khimicheva is expected to receive a pay-out of £14,820 in compensation.
Monica Sharma is an English Literature graduate from the University of Warwick. As Editor for HRreview, her particular interests in HR include issues concerning diversity, employment law and wellbeing in the workplace. Alongside this, she has written for student publications in both England and Canada. Monica has also presented her academic work concerning the relationship between legal systems, sexual harassment and racism at a university conference at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.