Senior Executive Exited In "sham" Redundancy Was Victim Of Pregnancy And Maternity Discrimination

• Published date: 06 October 2021
• Subject Matter: Employment and HR, Discrimination, Disability & Sexual Harassment, Redundancy/Layoff, Employee Rights/ Labour Relations
• Law Firm: Brahams Dutt Badrick French LLP
• Author: Mr James Hockley and Amanda Steadman

In the recent case of Shipp v City Sprint UK Limited an Employment Tribunal unanimously held that a senior employee was unfairly dismissed, harassed and discriminated against on the grounds of maternity/pregnancy and sex. City Sprint's argument that Mrs Shipp's role was redundant following an internal business reorganisation was held to be nothing more than a sham.

What happened in this case?

Mrs Shipp had been employed by City Sprint Limited for 10 years at the date of her dismissal. She began a period of maternity leave on 10 June 2019 and was due to return to work in March 2020. At the time she went on maternity leave, she was City Sprint's Group Marketing Director and sat on both the City Sprint Executive Board and the Group Executive Board.

She informed her colleagues about her pregnancy in February 2019 and was asked a number of highly inappropriate and intrusive questions from various senior executives. Such questions concerned when she had stopped using contraception, if her pregnancy was planned, and if she had thought about how the pregnancy would affect her long-term career prospects. In May 2019, shortly before she went on maternity leave, the Director of Operations said to her: "when you have to leave that little one in nursery, you won't want to come back". The CEO also purportedly remarked that they should put a wager on how much weight Mrs Shipp would put on during her pregnancy (however that comment was contested).

Mrs Shipp found these comments offensive and humiliating. She considered making a formal complaint but decided against it because she did not want her maternity leave to be marred by the issue. Furthermore, she was wary about making complaints against senior executives in circumstances where there had already been some allusion to the effects of her pregnancy on her career prospects. Instead, she raised her concerns informally with the Director of Customer Management and the Head of HR before going on maternity leave.

By the end of July 2019, all of the Group Executives (save for Mrs Shipp who was on maternity leave) had either been dismissed, resigned or made redundant. From 1 August 2019, City Sprint began to discuss reorganising the business. Even though Mrs Shipp was the sole remaining member of the Group Executive Board at that time, City Sprint failed to inform or consult with her about the proposed changes. Mrs Shipp first became aware of the proposed reorganisation on 6 September 2019 when she met with City Sprint's...