Pregnant employee cannot be dismissed – even during probation!?

On the 3rd of October, 2008, the Court of Appeal confirmed the first decision of the Industrial Tribunal, in the case of Anabelle Cumbo vs Float Glass Ltd where the employee alleged that she was dismissed because she was pregnant.

The interesting element of the case was that there was conflicting evidence as to whether the employee was dismissed during her probationary period or not. The Tribunal in fact decided to believe the version and the documents presented by the employee in this instance and she was awarded € 4542.28 as compensation from the Tribunal for being dismissed because she was pregnant. The Tribunal did not go into the issue of probation directly as it said that the plea of probation was raised too late in the day. 

Neither did the the Court of Appeal, as part its judgement, go in detail as to whether a pregnant employee could be dismissed during probation, even if pregnant, since it based its decision on the findings of the Tribunal in relation to the conflicting evidence. However, the court stated that any dismissal from the workplace due to pregnancy cannot but be illegitimate and obviously discriminatory. In our view this means that although there was no direct enunciation in relation to dismissal of a pregnant employee during probation, our court came extremely close to making a statement that if an employee is dismissed for being pregnant, even during probation, the dismissal would be unfair.