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Firm guilty of sex discrimination for unreasonably favoring female employee on maternity leave

The employment appeals tribunal has ruled that it is discriminatory to unreasonably favour a female employee who is on maternity leave over a male colleague.

The case involved a redundancy situation where the employees were scored on various criteria to establish which of them should be made redundant. The employee on maternity leave was given top points for receiving quick payment from clients despite there being no recent figures to base the scoring on. She therefore scored higher than her male colleague who was made redundant.

The employment appeals tribunal ruled that giving the female employee a notional top score whilst the male employee's actual figures were used for the assessment was discriminatory and that the male colleague was therefore unfairly dismissed.

Although it is permitted to give special treatment to women who are absent on maternity leave to ensure that they are not unfairly discriminated against, the treatment in this case went beyond what was necessary as the figures from just before the woman went on maternity leave could have been used instead.

The male colleague was awarded £123,000 by the tribunal.