To have done a job interview at 20 weeks pregnant and not disclosed

Is it ? In my last pregnancy I told work at 25 weeks as required by law, not before why should I have ? I know loads of women who interviewed for new jobs at 4 or 5 months pregnant, yes it's a PITA for the employer but completely legal.

This is bollocks enjoy your pregnancy no one will even remember im 18m when ypucome back from maternity leave.

@plsdontlookatme · Yesterday 22:30

What are pregnant women who need a job actually supposed to do, then? Purposefully sabotage their own interviews for the benefit of a corporation?

@dancehysterical22

Be in a job before they got pregnant.

100% this. ^

@dancehysterical22 · Today 05:17

The fact you actively, cheerfully said ‘no’ , rather than just not mentioning it would rub me up the wrong way as an employer and I’d feel I’d be unable to trust you.

This ^ is the thing for me. The OP said in the interview that she had NOTHING else to disclose, even though she is well into a pregnancy. That would really make me see that person differently if I were the employer.

If this is a new contract in the new job, the OP could well find herself being dumped by the company 2 years after starting, because an employer can get rid of anyone they like if they have been there for less than 2 years.

The OP could kick off and say 'they've done this because I went off pregnant within a few weeks of starting the job,' and she can try and take them to a tribunal, but as soon as it emerges that she lied at her interview and didn't disclose that she was pregnant, (and I don't even think 'by omission,' she said there was nothing else to disclose that might affect the role,) I doubt that the tribunal will take her side. And she will have to prove that the employer is getting rid of her because of what she did. They could just say her work isn't quite up to scratch, and it's just not working out.

Look I think it's great that pregnant women have all these new rights, and I want to see women protected, but I think the law stating that a woman doesn't have to disclose that she is pregnant to a prospective employer is just ridiculous. It may be 'legal' but it is ridiculous. I'm entitled to think that. And according to many comments on here, and the poll result, plenty of other posters think so too.

How could you ever trust that person again? As some posters have said, it will make employers think very seriously about employing women of childbearing age. So the more that things like this happen, the worse things are going to get for younger women in the workplace. Can the 'you do what you want OP, you're ENTITLED to, it's the LAW' posters actually not get that?

All this said though (as I said earlier,) I have never known anyone do this in real life. Apply for a job whilst pregnant and not disclose the pregnancy. Only ever read about it on here.

According to a lot of the comments, people don't think she should have told them at interview, but do think she should have made more of an effort to tell them once she had accepted the job. She was right to look after herself at interview, but wrong in making things harder for the managers afterwards.

The distinction doesn't really show up well in the binary voting options though.

I think the only real issue is that if they don't formally know by a certain point, then you won't be entitled to maternity pay. Yes it may be a pain for them, and they likely wouldn't have offered you a job had they known, but theres so much discrimination in the workplace, you did what was best for your career longer term.

It's illegal to ask if she's pregnant. If we're going to hold women to account as liars for not answering the question "Is there anything else we need to know about?" with no, then that completely undermines the law. It would mean that employers could just phrase the illegal question in an open way and women would be morally compelled to answer, so the legal protection would achieve nothing and be pointless, putting pregnant women in an unwinnable situation.

I think the views are very much decided by people’s experience in the real world. I have over 25 years of experience in corporate and SmE’s and honestly in that time I’ve never seen a company (and there have been many) where the company has put any employee first. In my case, I came back from my second Maternity leave and wasn’t treated very well. I busted a gut, whilst juggling baby and work and everything else and got too reviews for my efforts. Didn’t count for a jot when they made the team redundant. All my worries about how I would tell them I was pregnant, how I did a perfect handover, was on call during mat leave in case they had queries. Didn’t count for a thing. The OP could have told them and would she have got a thanks? A guarantee when she got back she’d get an equal position? Basically she would get diddly squat for telling them and doing herself out of an opportunity that may never come up again. I know someone who turned down a promotion when pregnant as she didn’t think it would be fair to take it as she couldn’t give 100% at that time. Did she get another opportunity after she came back? Nope not at all. I think I’m maybe jaded but pretty much most women I know have been screwed over after having children so whilst I’d think in an ideal world she should have told them, I know that she wouldn’t get any pat on the back for telling them or any future recompense for doing the right thing.

Even on Mumsnet, this is the prevailing view, that the OP has been unreasonable. The posts on this thread seem more like they support the OP, but if you look at the vote, it’s 60:40, with the 60 thinking op has been unreasonable.

Please don't feel this way. They are behaving in an awful, discriminatory way towards you. Yes, it's complicated for them but you were fully entitled not to disclose. It looks like you wouldn't have got the job if you had, based on their attitude and they are/would have been very much in the wrong. It's also a large, corporate employer - no one's take home is being affected and managers are paid to deal with complications. I have been a manager in that situation and my empathy for the woman, as a feminist, outweighed my concerns about covering maternity leave.

Oh gosh that reminds me of when we hired a candidate, waited 6 months for the end of their gardening leave, they resigned before they joined as they had another offer they had been interviewing for whilst on gardening leave.

I’m not sure you’re correct, in terms of the law, but in any case this was an internal transfer with the same employer. And at least one part of the employer org knew (her old boss) as OP had disclosed to them.

What are you on about?? It’s literally in the OP.

In para 2 she says her manager knew from 6 weeks because of HG and she had 2 months on sick leave so that would have absolutely triggered HR involvement in a big firm.

But then she'd have no way of proving they'd not offered her the job because she was pregnant.
Agree she should have told them before going on leave though.

This all day. It sounds like they wouldn’t have given her the job if she disclosed her pregnancy. They wouldn’t have given her another reason for turning her down.

I never get the outrage. You have to think of youself first. Your job would get rid of you in a heartbeat if they wanted to.

I think you just made that up.

This!

This is an assumption though, OP never said her role was directly maternity cover for someone else. The managers sound awful in general - not giving their time to speak to her before annual leave. Sounds like they only care about themselves.

Be in a job before they got pregnant

You should have disclosed you were pregnant at the appropriate time during the interview process and then should you feel they acted differently as a result of that information you could have dealt with it based on current employment law regarding discrimination.

As an employer I would now want rid of you, not because you are pregnant but because you have shown yourself to be untrustworthy.

But you had already started, theres the difference

The fact you actively, cheerfully said ‘no’ , rather than just not mentioning it would rub me up the wrong way as an employer and I’d feel I’d be unable to trust you.

What's done is done! The should you have disclosed stuff argument is null and void as they can't discriminate against your pregnancy (although we know workplaces do). The thing is, you're ultimately still with the same company and they did hire who they thought was best for the job, that hasn't changed.

Are they pissed off? Yes! Are they being frosty? Most likely.

Now, what to do about it. Head high, friendly demeanor and just go about your job as efficiently as possible. Make yourself as useful as possible so that they will miss you when you leave and then hopefully look forward to your return. Keep in mind, the person who hired you may now be getting a quiet kick up the bum from their own boss for this, but you've done nothing wrong.

Congratulations on the promotion.

You have done absolutely nothing wrong. I'm a bit disappointed to see people saying you should have disclosed it when you have a legal right not to do so for very good reason and were evidently the best candidate for the job. Very surprised as a childfree woman to find this the less popular opinion on MN!

I think your suggestion of letting them cool off and hoping the atmosphere improves over time sounds fine. Colleagues don't have to be friends, but if you notice any whiff of discrimination, document it.

Your colleagues should be annoyed that the job was not advertised as maternity cover, not at you.

To be honest I think you’ve handled the pregnancy disclosure in an immature way.

Being pregnant doesn’t have to be a career barrier, if you try to give the right signals. For example instead of telling them a month later about the pregnancy in the way you did, (which you admit may have come across badly) you could have also been more proactive. Eg added on that you want to achieve X before maternity leave and Y when you return. Ie work with them to agree a reasonable plan of action especially as it’s a new role.

at the moment they’re probably thinking there’s limited value in investing in your training and onboarding if you’re going to be on a long term absence soon and therefore embedded in post for over a year. Pregnant or not, it’s a valid thing for your manager to worry about - because you might have been hired specifically to backfill team capacity. You said in regards to your previous role, that you going on maternity leave was irrelevant because it doesn’t affect the old team that much, dozens of staff etc. But you can’t judge your new team by your old team’s resourcing and standards especially as you have more responsibilities in the new role and it’s a smaller team. You basically treated the new team, as if they were your old team. Whereas for me I would have taken the approach of trying to build rapport with my new boss and building trust etc. when you work in entry level roles, you’re used to work being backfilled easy - but the more responsibility you have, the more you need to consider handovers for absences, continuity etc.