A marine biologist has won £130,000 after she was unfairly dismissed from her job at the University of Cumbria.
Caroline Law, 35, lost her job two months before she was due to go on maternity leave in June 2020, an employment tribunal heard.
Mrs Law was employed on a fixed-term contract in an externally funded role. The funding for her role was set to end in July 2020, but further funding was possible.
In January 2020 Mrs Law told management she was pregnant and had an increased risk of pre-eclampsia, which could be brought on by stress.
When the pandemic hit, the university said the possibility of securing more funding for her role vanished, as all resources were being directed into COVID-19 relief.
Ms Law joined the University of Cumbria in Carlisle in 2015 before becoming a manager and was promoted to an academic lead in 2019.
The “well thought of” academic also helped teach the zoology course, but worked mainly on an externally funded project.
In June 2020, the HR department at the university emailed Mrs law’s line manager saying her contract was due to end. The tribunal heard that Mrs Law’s line manager approached this process in a “very blunt way” and did not consider if there was an ongoing need for Mrs Law’s work after funding expired. Part of her role involved outreach and recruitment activities at schools and colleges.
During Mrs Law’s redundancy meeting, her boss gave “weird and inappropriate” unsolicited pregnancy advice that she said made her “upset and uncomfortable.”
The tribunal heard that advice given to Mrs Law covered ways to secure child benefit, sourcing second-hand baby clothes and the benefits of a particular type of thermometer and techniques for bathing a baby.
The line manager also introduced Mrs Law to another member of staff whose wife was currently pregnant. This was done via an email headed ‘Babies’ following her redundancy meeting which Mrs Law said she found embarrassing.
The advice was given in the context of Mrs Law facing financial difficulty due to her husband also undergoing redundancy. Her boss said the comments were well-intentioned.
After researching her employment rights following her husband’s redundancy, Mrs Law attended another meeting to ask about other potential job roles at the university.
In the meeting, her boss suggested that Mrs Law might be able to do marking work from home whilst the baby slept and that if she kept working hard then ‘karma’ would mean things would work out for her.
The tribunal heard that when Mrs Law attempted to appeal her redundancy in another meeting at the end of June 2020, the panel found the university’s CEO David Chesser was dismissive and rejected her argument that her pregnancy made her ‘vulnerable.’
Mrs Law said she felt vulnerable being pregnant in the midst of the pandemic and that she had been disproportionately affected by the university’s COVID-19 response, despite vice-chancellor Professor Julie Mennell saying the university would not permit vulnerable staff to be affected in that manner.
The tribunal heard Mrs Law had found the appeal meeting difficult and emotional. At the end, Mr Chesser commended her for articulating her case
well and “speaking up so boldly” which Mrs Law found condescending. Mr Chesser did not give evidence at the tribunal.
Employment judge Joanne Dunlop concluded: “Her line manager was well-intentioned and this was also apparent to Mrs Law. Mrs Law’s concern was not so much about the advice itself, but about what it said about the redundancy process that her boss was spending the meeting dispensing such advice.
“It seems Mr Chesser was rejecting Mrs Law’s reasonable point that pregnancy itself creates a vulnerability. Having regard to that context, we find Mr Chesser’s comments were unfavourable treatment on the grounds of her pregnancy. Mr Chesser’s approach to the appeal was perfunctory. Mrs Law had raised serious and difficult issues which merited exploration and explanation at the very least.”
A University of Cumbria spokesperson said: “We apologise to Mrs Law for the distress we have caused her. The university prides itself in its employment practices and the support it gives its staff.
“Managed by the university as a short-term contract coming to an end, this case has highlighted wider issues relating to Mrs Law’s pregnancy which we did not properly recognise at the time. The university accepts the tribunal’s conclusion; there are lessons for us to learn, to help ensure that we achieve the consistency of application to our processes in the future.”
