Miss C McKenzie v A C Flooring Limited — 2021

Miss C McKenzie was employed as a Purchase Ledger Accounts Assistant from 21 May 2018 and disclosed her pregnancy on 22 October 2018. She experienced hyperemesis gravidarum and later other pregnancy-related absences. The tribunal found that when redundancy was raised on 1 and 6 March 2019 the meetings were very brief, there was no meaningful consultation, the claimant was not told she was formally at risk on 1 March, and there was no clear written explanation of the pool, the criteria, or the scoring process.

The tribunal accepted the claimant and Aleks Chachaj as broadly comparable colleagues in Purchase Ledger work and rejected the respondent's case that Ms Chachaj was merely a cover worker. It found the redundancy scoring process opaque and not objective or evidence-based, that the claimant's attendance and timekeeping scores were materially influenced by pregnancy-related illness, and that the scores for performance and skills, experience, length of service, and future potential were inconsistent with the claimant's earlier probation review and otherwise unexplained. It drew an adverse inference from the unexplained exclusion of Ms Chachaj from the pool and from the inadequately explained scoring process.

On that basis, the tribunal held that the reason or principal reason for selection for redundancy was connected with pregnancy, so the dismissal was automatically unfair under s.99 ERA 1996 and regulation 20. It also held that several specific acts amounted to unfavourable treatment because of pregnancy or illness resulting from it for the purposes of s.18(2) EqA 2010, namely the pool composition, the claimant's attendance/timekeeping score, the scores for length of service, performance and skills, experience, and future potential, and the decision not to replace Ms Chachaj after her resignation.

The tribunal dismissed the remaining section 18(2) allegations. It discussed section 13 sex discrimination in the alternative but did not reach a separate concluded finding on that aspect, stating that it could be revisited under the tribunal rules if necessary. Remedy was not determined in this judgment and was left to a further hearing.