Our Employment Law Solicitor, Nicole Natur, joined discussions with Kait Borsay on Times Radio over the weekend to provide her legal expertise on discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace, an issue which has come to the forefront during the pandemic.
When asked by Kait whether our Employment team had seen an increase in women coming forward with employment law issues they wished to pursue, Nicole commented:
“You’ll find that this is one of the most complex areas of employment law, particularly with regards to discrimination and lot of it comes down to the fact that employees have varying rights at different periods of their pregnancy or maternity leave absence. What you tend to find is that yes, there are additional rights and protections in place for employees but you don’t necessarily find that translating through as more enquiries or more new claims and that is usually because it is stacked against the claimant, not just when they’re pregnant but also in terms of whether they have the funds or the means. So in terms of whether we’ve seen an increase of any new enquiries, we haven’t seen a discernable increase and it might be due to how a number of employees who are vulnerable are on furlough so a lot of these issues are not coming to the forefront- but a lot of it may be down to the barriers that face claimants approaching solicitors for advice.”
An example given by Nicole of discriminatory behaviour shown towards pregnant women or those currently breast feeding, was employers forcing them to work in the workplace, when it has been deemed unsafe to do so.
If you would like to listen to the show in full you can do so here, or if you would just like to listen to Nicole’s full comments scroll to 1:45:30.
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To discuss Employment issues, please either email us at info@ramsdens.co.uk or call us on 01484 821 500 to speak to a member of our team.