Ms K Kozak v Baltyk International Ltd — 2021

The claimant worked for the respondent's Scarborough store from 26 November 2018 on 24 hours per week at £8.21 per hour. She informed the respondent she was pregnant in January 2019, took maternity leave from 30 June 2019, and in June 2020 asked for eight weeks of unpaid parental leave. The tribunal found Mr Tawfik agreed to that additional leave and did not tell her that taking it would end her existing contract of employment. It found that her original contract continued through July and August 2020 while she remained on leave.

When the claimant later said she wanted to return on reduced hours, including a few hours a day and some weekend work, the tribunal found that this did not fit the shop's shift system and that the parties then entered negotiations about possible alternative working arrangements, including a zero-hours contract. The tribunal found those negotiations did not produce an agreed variation. It concluded that, by 2 September 2020 at the latest, the respondent had communicated that it would not offer reduced hours or a zero-hours contract and that the claimant was being dismissed without notice. It held there was no evidence the respondent was entitled to dismiss summarily, so the claimant succeeded on wrongful dismissal and was entitled to notice pay, which had not been quantified in the liability judgment.

The automatic unfair dismissal claim failed because the tribunal found the reason for dismissal was the claimant's insistence on reduced hours rather than her pregnancy, maternity leave, or parental leave. It held that the maternity and parental leave history formed part of the background but was not the cause of the dismissal, and that the respondent would have acted the same way if faced with another employee refusing to return on the contractual hours and shift pattern. The pregnancy/maternity discrimination claim also failed on the tribunal's findings, including its view that the maternity leave was not an effective or significant cause of the dismissal. By consent, the claimant's unpaid holiday pay claim succeeded in principle because the respondent accepted she had not received her full statutory annual leave entitlement, but the amount was left for later agreement or a remedy hearing.