Pregnancy sparking redundancy process?

[Pizdets]

Hi,

I think I might just be totally paranoid, but I'm getting myself more and more worked up about work and I wanted to get some third party opinions from you if you don't mind!

I'm currently in a middle management role (own team and nominal P&L responsibility) in a division of a medim sized-company. There are probably about 25 people employed in my division. Right now I think I'm pretty well-respected and am doing fairly well in the role (although I've not had an appraisal for 18 months, so don't have much proof of this)

Over the last year, 2 members of the team have got pregnant. Before they announced their pregnancies there was no problem...but both were made redundant before their maternity leave began. This was part of further restructuring of the business, but there was only one other person made redundant - ie 66% of the people made redundant were preganant and 100% of the women who got pregnant were made redundant.

So it seems like the redundancies are over for now, although there's been no formal recognition that the 're-structure' is finalised. I am now 7 weeks pregnant, and am getting increasingly concerned that once I announce it to my boss, he'll annonce a new round of 're-structuring' and I'll be out on my ear.

All I've read about redundancy in pregnancy is that they have to try and find you another role, and make sure you're fairly compared to other people in the process...but they've just recruited an immediate counterpart to me who has much more experience, so it wouldn't be hard to decide he's better suited to the role.

I suppose my question is - if they do start the process again with me, do I have grounds for a serious complaint/some kind of action against them? Or if they tick all the boxes can I just be forced out for getting knocked up?

I'm so sorry for ranting. If you can give me any advice or thoughts I'd be really grateful!

Piz

Legally, they're not allowed to use pregnancy as a reason for redundancy.
But, they can make a pregnant woman redundant if they can justify it - i.e. a restructure means they only need 4 people instead of 5, and the pregnant woman is the least qualified.

As far as I know, you'd only have grounds for complaint if they made you redundant instead of a less qualified person, or if they actually said it was because you're pregnant. I suspect that some companies will let pregnancy influence their decisions during redundancy rounds, but if they're smart enough to avoid mentioning pregnancy, it's not necessarily easy to prove.

I would hold off telling them about your pregnancy until you legally have to (thats week 25 of pregnancy I think), as if you've been employed by the same employer continuously for at least 26 weeks into the 15th week before the week your baby is due, then they still have to pay your SMP, even if they do make you redundant.

Thanks misslinnet that's what i'm worried about. They've been careful to tick all the boxes before and I'm sure they can easily re-structure around my role.

I suppose my concern would be keeping it quiet until 25 weeks, though. If I don't tell them but they guess, won't that put me in an even weaker position?

i would have assumed that that would be the weaker position.
i was once infomred that once you had officially informed them that u were pregnant you were better protected against redundnacy.

Yes. If you dont tell them and they guess, then they could claim they had no idea you were PG when they made you redundant.

I don't entirely agree with misslinnet that you have to be told you are being made redundant because of your PG before you have a case (few employers are that daft). The criteria is that you have to be able to demonstrate a reasonable suspicion that PG may have been behind the decision. Then it is up to the company to prove it wasn't.

I think you are probably in a fairly strong position, because there would be enough suspicion raised if you became another redundancy as soon as you announced your PG. Ticking the boxes won't stop it looking bad if they get rid of all the PG women as soon as they fall PG.

If it were me I would do some underhand fishing to see if you can get someone to confirm in email or something ASAP that restructuring is complete. Once I'd got that I'd tell them I was PG.