Dismissal and pregnancy and other parental rights 




Dismissing a woman because she is pregnant, or for any reason connected with her pregnancy, is automatically unfair (section 99(1)(a), ERA 96). 




Dismissing a woman during her maternity leave is automatically unfair if the reason for dismissal is that she has given birth, or any other reason connected with her having given birth (section 99(1)(b), ERA 96).




As long as the main reason for dismissal is to do with her pregnancy or maternity, it will be automatically unfair even if there might be other reasons.



The protection against automatically unfair dismissal for pregnancy or maternity reasons extends to temporary employees (Webb v EMO Cargo (UK) Limited [1994] QB 718).




It also extends to the non-renewal of a fixed-term contract where the reason for non-renewal is that the woman will be unavailable for work at the start of the new term because of pregnancy. The EAT said that any other conclusion would encourage employers to try to avoid laws banning pregnancy discrimination by issuing successive fixed-term contracts (Caruana v Manchester Airport [1995] UKEAT 687/94/1411).




Dismissing employees for exercising maternity, parental, paternity or adoption leave or shared parental leave rights is automatically unfair (see Chapter 9). For information about the enhanced protection on redundancy, see Chapter 11, page 398.



There is also protection under the Equality Act 2010 from sex discrimination and harassment, maternity and pregnancy discrimination — see Chapter 7, page 214 and Chapter 8, page 277.