Pregnant? Wait till the boss hears

Just days after telling her employer she was pregnant, Danniella McClain was made redundant. And the number of similar cases of sexual discrimination is rising Be open, honest, and unapologetic – this is the approach pregnancy manuals advise women to take when informing their employers they are going to have a baby. Most manuals also recognise that this can be one of the most stressful parts of early pregnancy. Danniella McClain, 28, waited until she reached the 13-week milestone and had seen the foetus on a scan before telling her boss. She was anxious, but fairly confident that it would be a straightforward conversation. Within seconds it was obvious the news was unwelcome; within days she was made redundant. After a protracted legal battle, McClain won a claim against her former employer on the grounds that he had subjected her to sex discrimination, related to her pregnancy, when he dismissed her. The case represents a rare legal success in an area of discrimination that often goes unchecked. Although news of large payouts to City executives make occasional headlines, cases involving relatively low-paid women who are either sacked or bullied into resigning are far more common, and yet go to trial far less frequently – usually because the women are unable to afford basic legal advice. McClain’s story is striking because it is such a brazen instance of an employer taking rapid action to dispense with a staff member on hearing news of her pregnancy. McClain came in to work at the London estate agents, Hogarth, where she had been employed for nine months, on a Monday morning in late September 2009, noted that the company’s owner was in a good mood, and decided this was the moment to tell him her news. His response was not what she had expected. “He said: ‘Right, right . . . OK’,” she

Posted by on June 24, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.