A social media manager who said her former boss turned hostile towards her after she told him she was pregnant has won €35,000 in compensation for maternity-related discrimination.
Emma Hughes, who was a brand and digital marketing executive at Brazilian Coffee House Limited, trading as Dash Container Café at the Hole in the Wall, Blackhorse Avenue, Dublin 7, secured the award worth a year's gross salary on foot of a complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998.
Ms Hughes alleged that the owner of the coffee shop business, the publican Martin McCaffrey, "acted completely unreasonably" when he found out she was pregnant in August 2022 and subjected her to "hostility" and "unreasonable criticism", as well as pressuring her to keep working while on maternity leave.
Ms Hughes, who represented herself before the tribunal at hearings in November 2023 and August 2024, explained that her job was to create "exciting and diverse" content for the company’s social media.
She said Mr McCaffrey was "very happy" with her work producing content for the firm’s social media until she told him in August 2022 that she was pregnant and planned to take maternity leave later that year – when she said his attitude "changed for the worse".
She said there was no change in her on-the-job performance, but that Mr McCaffrey "began frequently giving out" after that. This would happen "almost every Monday" when her employer would claim he had not seen any content from the firm on social media, she said.
Ms Hughes said she tried to solve this by turning on Instagram notifications on Mr McCaffrey’s phone and showing him how to find his company’s profile on the app. However, despite giving her boss briefings "most days" on her work, Mr McCaffrey "continued to give out" and complain that he "could not see the content".
Her position was that Mr McCaffrey was "blatantly trying to ignore [her work]".
Ms Hughes also told the WRC that Mr McCaffrey moved the date of a planned event in September 2022 from the 24th of the month to the 18th, when she was due to be on pre-booked annual leave. When she told him she could not work it he said at first this was fine – but then told her she had never asked for annual leave during the week of the event, she said.
When she returned from her leave, she said, she found that the event was a success. However, she said Mr McCaffrey called her to a meeting, where he was "very angry" with her and said the event was a "disaster".
He accused her of being "not committed to the role" and said it was "a disgrace" that she had been away, she said. Ms Hughes told the WRC that she became upset at this point in the meeting and Mr McCaffrey then told her he "never gets a holiday" and "had to do everything himself".
Her evidence was that the Monday before her maternity leave was due to start in November 2022, Mr McCaffrey "was annoyed" with her about plans for her leave and told her he had "assumed" she would be working an hour or two a day to "help out" with his business.
She said that Mr McCaffrey had three months to put a plan in place for her absence and find a replacement and she felt "under pressure" to keep working. Her evidence was that she "realised that Mr McCaffrey had forgotten to find a replacement" and offered to place a job advert – at which point she said her boss criticised her for not doing so "weeks ago" if she "planned on not working".
Ms Hughes said she later learned from a colleague that the man hired to cover her absence had started on €35,000 a year, the same as she was earning, but by February 2024 had been offered a pay rise to €50,000. Ms Hughes also understood that the male employee "enjoyed unrestricted work-from-home" while she was required to look for permission based on a legitimate reason to work from home.
She told the WRC she filed formal grievances during her maternity leave and that no steps were taken to advance these before she was due to return in May 2024. She proceeded to file a WRC complaint in June that year, had no response, and decided to resign on June 26th, she said, telling her employer by letter: "I feel I have been left with no alternative."
"You have failed to address concerns which have ultimately given me no alternative at this time. I can not take any additional unpaid leave whilst I await to hear from you, as I need to support my new family," she added in the letter. Mr McCaffrey replied that he accepted her "voluntary" resignation, the tribunal noted.
In her decision, WRC adjudicator Catherine Byrne said she was satisfied that Ms Hughes’ uncontroverted evidence established an inference of discrimination linked to her pregnancy to which the company had offered no rebuttal, and found that the worker was discriminated against by the employer on the grounds of gender.
"The discrimination took the form of adverse treatment which occurred following the announcement by the complainant of her pregnancy and which continued up to the commencement of her maternity leave," Ms Byrne wrote.
Upholding the complaint, she ordered the employer to pay Ms Hughes a sum equivalent to a year’s gross salary, €35,000, and said it was to be given to the complainant as "non-remuneration-based compensation".
