The owners of a Co Cork takeaway who dismissed a pregnant cook because she was absent with severe morning sickness have been criticised for the “foolishness” and “unlawfulness” of their actions and ordered to pay €16,000 in compensation.
“I’ve got a business to look after and can’t be left stuck ... I’m sorry. All the best in your pregnancy,” the company directors told the worker as they let her go.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) heard the worker’s absences leading up to her dismissal in April 2021 were while she was suffering morning sickness so severe she was vomiting up to 20 times a day.
She had, however, turned up for work the day after being treated in hospital for severe dehydration from her condition, the tribunal heard.
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Giving evidence in her complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998 against Easy Meals Ltd, a takeaway food business in Millstreet, Co Cork, Stacey Barrett said her line manager had made “pointed” remarks referring to working while pregnant in the weeks before her dismissal.
Ms Barrett said that after becoming pregnant in January 2021 she was “in and out to the toilet” at work because of severe morning sickness that lasted from “morning to night”.
After her visit to hospital on February 1st that year Ms Barrett said she went back to work the following day in the hope that new medication for morning sickness would gradually take effect.
Her line manager told her she was “pregnant and not disabled”, Ms Barrett said.
“I couldn’t believe that she was brazen enough to say it,” the complainant said.
Ms Barrett said her shifts were reduced later in February 2021 before she received a dismissal letter, on February 19th.
“I’ve got a business to look after and can’t be left stuck ... I’m sorry. All the best in your pregnancy,” the letter read.
The complainant originally named company director Claudio Malizia in her complaint form. WRC adjudicator Lefre de Burgh said a “wholly technical defence” was mounted in the case claiming that the wrong legal respondent had been named and that the worker was now out of time to bring a new complaint against the limited company.
However, she accepted the counterargument of Ms Barrett’s barrister, Seamus Collins BL, instructed by Sean Ormonde & Co, that there was no prejudice to the respondent in amending the complaint form to refer to Easy Meals Ltd.
In her decision Ms de Burgh also accepted Ms Barrett’s uncontested evidence of being the subject of “inappropriate comment at work by her line manager, Ms Samantha Cleary, relating to her pregnancy”.
“The treatment meted out to the complainant was egregious in nature, and I note its foolishness in addition to its unlawfulness,” Ms de Burgh wrote.
She upheld Ms Barrett’s complaint on the gender ground and ordered Easy Meals Ltd to pay her €16,000 in compensation, along with €500 for a breach of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994.
