A mother has won more than £28,700 ($37,000) in compensation after her boss fired her for getting pregnant while she was already on maternity leave.
Nikita Twitchen was preparing to return to her office admin job at the British building services firm First Grade Projects after having a baby when she discovered she was pregnant again.
The happy news turned sour when she disclosed the impending bundle of joy to her boss, managing director Jeremy Morgan, during a meeting about her return-to-work plan.
After it became clear the 27-year-old would be going on another 36-week maternity leave, she was made redundant and forced to take cleaning jobs while pregnant to support her family. Now, an employment tribunal has ruled she was unfairly dismissed.
First Grade Projects and a representative for Twitchen didn’t respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Second pregnancy ‘came as a shock’ to the boss
Twitchen started working for First Grade Projects, a sponsor of Swansea City football club, on Oct. 13, 2021. As an office administration assistant, she told the Cardiff tribunal, her role included answering the phone, handling payments, raising funds, filing documents, and more.
Moreover, she described her working relationship with Morgan as “very good” and said that he was “very responsive” when she needed to speak with him.
However, shortly after taking the new job, Twitchen became pregnant and went on maternity leave around eight months after starting, from June 27, 2022, until March 2023.
Just before she was due to return, Twitchen met with Morgan on Feb. 17, 2023, to discuss her transition back to work after having a baby.
The tribunal heard how the return-to-work meeting “started positively,” with Morgan saying that business was doing well and that the company had secured an NHS contract, while adding that he was looking forward to Twitchen coming back.
However, toward the end of the meeting, Twitchen revealed she was pregnant again—and told the tribunal this “came as a shock” to her boss.
“Whilst it was suggested by [Morgan] in the Grounds of Response that he congratulated the claimant, this was disputed by the claimant in her oral evidence,” the court documents read. Twitchen also denied that she offered to resign if her second pregnancy “presented a problem” for the company. She was approximately eight weeks pregnant at the time.
“Indeed, the tribunal accepted the evidence of the claimant who stated that she needed the job and the security that came with it. She was responsible for her children and needed the financial stability.”
The next month, when her maternity leave officially ended, Twitchen said nobody from First Grade got in touch to discuss her return to work.
So she reached out to her employer on March 27, stating that she wished to resume her role on April 3, 2023—to which Morgan responded by saying it was “best to leave it until you have your routine in place.”
It wasn’t until April, Twitchen told the tribunal, that she noticed her boss was acting “out of character,” after she inquired about taking annual leave during her first month back.
He subsequently ignored her messages until April 18—when he called to say she was being dismissed because of financial difficulties and that certain “savings had to be made.”
He later claimed new software was being installed, which “meant that the claimant’s role would no longer exist with her becoming redundant.”
The real reason for her dismissal: being pregnant, judge says
The employment judge, Robin Havard, found that Twitchen was dismissed because she was pregnant.
Judge Havard criticized First Grade’s failure to “produce any evidence of the alleged financial difficulties, or of the new software” during the court case, as well as “any coherent evidence-based alternative explanation…despite them having ample opportunity to provide one.”
He also pointed out that the company has rebranded, recruited, and invested in new vehicles since Twitchen’s dismissal.
“Whilst the roles advertised were not roles to which the Claimant would be suited, it cast doubt on the Respondents’ assertion that the company was in financial difficulty,” the tribunal found.
The judge also highlighted Morgan’s “change of attitude” and “speed of response” to messages after learning of the pregnancy.
He concluded the dismissal of Twitchen was unfair and must have caused her “real anxiety and distress over a period of time, having been dismissed when pregnant and losing her sense of financial security with all the family responsibilities that she had.”
“There were sufficient facts to infer that the respondents’ unfavourable treatment of the claimant was because of the pregnancy and that the respondents’ conduct was discriminatory,” the tribunal ruled.
