indirect discrimination against working mother

[SamSam786R]

Dear all,i am concerned that my employers are pushing me out of the business as working there has become impossible. as primary childcare provider for my children i require a certain amount of flexibility to work. the job i do is comms and can be done remotely. despite this i will go into the office three days a week. however, HR have told me that i must do certain days where childcare is impossible and so i am scrambling each week to find someone to watch my kids after school. they have said that this poilcy applies to all employees and NO exceptions can be made. my manager has told me that a job like mine is not suitable for working mothers and HR have stated that if i can not work around my children i need to go part time. in tandem i have now been put on an informal pip for a spelling error. since then, every mistake is emailed to me and my manager will message me on teams with all capital letters asking why i made these mistakes and that i can no longer make any mistakes at work. obviously, this along with the lack of flexibility or understanding has put me under immense stress - just today i cried in the toilet for one hour and had a minor panic attack. it might seem like a small thing, but these small aggressive remarks and confrontational emails have taken a huge toll on me. futhermore, my childless colleagues have been given leeway for working hours and days due to relocations. on top of that my HR person has stated that i am not attending the office for my full hours despite him coming in after me and leaving before every week. i am also one of the few people who come into an office regularly. they have also said i have baby brain on many occasions and compared me to my male colleagues. sorry for making this so long and rambly, there are so many other things that they have said and done to me, im so tired and would LOVE to resign but i need to pay my bills and the job market is awful right now. advice on: a: how to survive and b: how to escalate this with employment tribunal. thank you

It absolutely does sound like discrimination!
contact pregnant then screwed and see if you can get FRU to represent you at an employment tribunal. Frankly they sound awful.

Keep looking for a new job, I know it's a tough market, but keep looking. They want you gone and I don't think going to stop until you quit or are fired. Sorry OP, life is too short to work in horrible environments and I hope you're lucky enough to be snapped up soon by a better employer.

@SamSam786R writing as someone who’s been there, got the T-shirt, etc… as per pps there are a number of things your employer has done that could be sex discrimination. You could make a formal complaint and ultimately take them to a tribunal where damages can be high.

But

you could spend the next 6 year’s of your life doing this. Meaning you will have this hanging over you and your family at birthdays, Christmas, holidays, etc. The chances of you getting any promotion or career development in that time would be zero. You would be signed up to working in a hostile environment for as long as it took.

so I recommend you

1. polish up your cv and start applying for alternative roles
2. consider paying for legal advice as to if you might be in a position to negotiate a paid quiet exit
3. keep your nose clean in the meantime - pay for regular childcare, go to the office every day, tick all the boxes

good luck

I agree with those calling this as bullying.

Your manager/CEO have a perception, possibly erroneous, that the team is made up of young, thrusting, 'go-getters', without outside commitments.

As a working mother you dont fit that.

Unfortunately once you are in the position where your 'face doesnt fit' then every minor issue is amplified. It will be noted and used as further evidence of you not being 'right' for the team.

There will be discrimination. All too many people have a subconscious perception that working mothers should only have 'little' p/t jobs earning 'pin money'. Anything which is different from that is wrong.

I'm retiring in a few years and have experienced and seen this throughout my career.

It's sounds like they are creating a hostile working environment and there seems to be a degree of unfairness if other colleagues have more flexibility. As others have said you have the right to request flexible working but equally employers do not have to agree to it if this impacts negatively on their business. I wonder if part of the problem is that you are not meeting each other half way ? ie why are you scrambling for childcare every week, is this every day or just the days they want you in the office ? It sounds as though you don't have good working relationships with your colleagues and the one interpretation is that you are are not doing your job well enough and things are spiralling ? I would do everything you can to avoid escalating as the stress of a drawn out tribunal is not going to be helpful. Equally i would document all the comments , witnesses, incidences of unfair treatment etc and speak to ACAS

Well this is quite different from your OP where you said you are ‘scrambling every week’ to sort childcare. A one-off emergency because your normal reliable childcare fails is very different.
does the after school club often just cancel? If so, it’s not suitable for working parents. I would look at a childminder if that’s the case. But if it’s a one-off, then your workplace is not being reasonable. What you say now though is very different to your first post!

IANAL, but this "my manager has told me that a job like mine is not suitable for working mothers" sounds very like sex discrimination to me!

Lota of great advice but one big one i would recommend, is take notes.
Create an evidence file.

So for the childcare, hours stuff, you need to take notes of every conversation, dates, times, context around the comment, copies of emails etc.
If you have any discussions with HR or your manager about your hours, you send them an email afterwards.
'Hi, just wanted to confirm what we discussed today for both of our records.
You raised xxx to me and I explained xxx.
You responded with xxx (any shitty comments)

• note any actions from the meeting going forward

Thanks
OP'
Keep it factual and so it looks like just a log of a conversation. But make sure any shitty comments you have written down.

When it comes to performance:
Email your manager asking for an outline lf the issues and what targets need to be met, in writing.
If they set up a meeting, then take notes (and tell them you are taking notes because you want to make sure you are getting things right) and then send them an email afterwards.
What you need is.

• What are the issues.
• What does 'good' look like (and remember, for example, no spelling issues EVER is not a reasonable ask, it needs to be no more than 2 spelling issues a month - stuff that can be measured)
• what support your manager will provide (getting someone to check your work)
• what you will do (write yourself a checklist, use spell checker, ask a colleague to check etc)
• when this will be reviewed (in 2 months to monitor progress)
• how feedback will be given. You need to tell him how you want to receive feedback here. Decide what method works for you and asks for that. And I dont mean 'ask him to say it nicely and not when you're about to leave for the weekend' I mean 'request that he send feedback via email' if you'd prefer that to Teams messages.

Note all of this down in clear bullet points or a table in an email back to your manager to confirm you have understood.
Any further conversations, you write up into an email and send. Keep copies of teams messages. Articulate EVERYTHING that has been said - so if you've verbally asked for help and he has turned you down, make sure you write that down.

If you believe you are being treated unfairly, you need to get everything in writing - you need evidence. Not your feelings, not your memories, written evidence.

Can you ask for parental leave? It’s unpaid and taken in blocks of a week at a time but could buy you some time

If the policy applies to all employees then OP isn’t being singled out, so not direct discrimination. But employees are allowed to submit flexible working requests and employers have a duty to give serious consideration to the reasons for doing so. Generally there have to be genuine operational reasons for refusing.

Making comments like baby brain, saying her job is not suitable for working mothers when other non parents get leeway. It all sounds very toxic tbh and I think they are trying to get her to leave. Probably not because she's a mother but it all sounds very personal.

They want you out by the sounds of it. I would look for another job. Could you fight what they are doing? Yes but it is not worth the stress. They will likely dial it up once you show that you are fighting back.

Sorry this is happening to you

Call ACAS for free advice

OP even titled the thread "indirect discrimination".
All the PP saying it's not discrimination - please look at the posts made earlier regarding indirect discrimination (women disproportionately burdened with childcare) and think again please.

I thought it was kind of her manager to provide messages written in capitals since the OP doesn’t seem to have many of her own.

But you OP implied there were long standing issues with them not giving you flexibility, what flexibility do you regularly need if your children are usually in after school club? In my experience unexpected closures of school wraparound childcare are quite rare, I'm surprised if this is happening frequently and you are needing work to give you special flexibility because of it?

You really only have 2 choices with a bullying boss:

1. Leave - try to do this on your terms. Gather the evidence as @Thundertoast described. They may want to pay you off so that you go quietly.
2. Ride it out - I did this. My boss bullied me because she was being bullied by her boss. Eventually she had a bit of a breakdown and just failed to turn up one day. I dont have a lot of sympathy for her. She was incompetent but liked the money (I took over her role alongside my own).

Good luck @SamSam786R

This.

Also, if male colleagues are treated differently that is direct discrimination. Do get advice from ACAS, Pregnant then Screwed or your union.

The amount of armchair Lawyers on here is quite disturbing, and what is even more disturbing is the wholly inaccurate advice, in which, perpetuates Employers evading accountability.

Your claim in an employment tribunal will 100% be well-founded. The "baby brain" comment alone will contravene various differents Acts spanning across the Equality Act 2010, namely Sex Discrimination, Indirect Discrimination, and Unfavourable Treatment relating to sex.

Maternity, childcare are protected sex characteristics which are robustly protected under the Equality Act 2010 and the reasoning behind it is multi-faceted, one being that employers remove the barrier to work for females to bring the opportunities up to that of their male peers, to allow women to work and keep them in the work force.

The flexible working request is a blanket right for all employees, in which the employer doesn't have to grant the request (albeit more robust legislation is due to take effect in favour of the employee).

For working mothers, the flexible working request also captures the benefit of The Equality Act, given them iron-clad rights to a flexible working arrangement.

To the poster who also stated "You would have to prove discrimination", you are 100% incorrect.

Under Employment Law, the burden of proof lays with the employee to only simply present his/her claim. The burden then shifts back to the employer to prove they didn't discriminate. In this case, the comments, along with their lack of evidence to demonstrate why the role can only be conducted from the office, is a pretty slam dunk loss for them in court.

I do wish people would stop proffering shoddy and harmful advice, when clearly they have zero insight.

Well this is quite different from your OP where you said you are ‘scrambling every week’ to sort childcare. A one-off emergency because your normal reliable childcare fails is very different

It's noticeable, @crossedlines, that the story often changes according to the replies received, which is why it would often be useful to hear the employer's version of these matters

Though it won't happen, at least that would give us a broader view of whether there really is discrimination here, but it's worth remembering that failing to get everything wanted doesn't necessarily qualify, and the usual shrieks of "Tribunal / bullying" at every verse end don't change that

So, quite a different situation to the one you described in your OP. 🤷‍♀️

Disagree. I think this is good advice. For every story we read about on Mumsnet there are two, if not three sides to each story.
you do need to look at things objectively.
the baby brain comment was unacceptable. OP did you report this at the time? Is there a paper trail? Were there any witnesses?
I don’t think the request to ask you to work whether in the office or not in the office is discrimination. Regardless of where you main base is on a typical day you are expected to focus on the job you are being paid to do, and not have any distractions getting in the way, whatever that may be.
it’s not unreasonable to have childcare in place on your working days

Oops. I think I posted too soon. This update changes things somewhat.

the job i do is comms - @SamSam786R your work is of the same quality as your posts then it might be that you are not good at comms.

i have seen on emails clearly that my peers in the same team underperform me in several areas but i am being nitpicked over small mistakes and threated on a PIP. - Are you churning out a huge amount of substandard work?

Do you have any proof of the following?:

• My manager has told me that a job like mine is not suitable for working mothers
• they have also said i have baby brain on many occasions and compared me to my male colleagues.
• Being shouted at and accused of insubordination without real proof
• being marked low on my performance reviews
• being told i was doing a better job before i got pregnant and went on mat leave.

Thank you so much for posting this. The sheer ignorance on this thread is shocking with yet again people continually posting complete crap in order to bash a working mum.

Yet again I’m shocked on mumsnet about how much people seem to hate working mothers and how dare they ask for any sort of reasonable adjustments to manage childcare.

https://www.acas.org.uk/discrimination-and-the-law/indirect-discrimination

People need to give that page on ACAS a good read. If they are saying you need to attend on set days without a good business reason “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” then this could be indirect sex discrimination based on the fact that women bear the bulk of childcare responsibilities.