How Far Should Maternity Protection Stretch?

This article was first published in People Management on 18 April 2011.

Eversheds Legal Services Ltd v De Belin

A recent EAT case demonstrates that employers can go too far when trying to compensate for disadvantage suffered by women on maternity leave during a redundancy selection process.

One of the many myths about employment law is that an employee on maternity leave cannot be made redundant. This misunderstanding might be partially due to the fact that there are circumstances in a redundancy situation where an employee on maternity leave has to be treated more favourably than others. These rare examples of lawful "positive" discrimination can occur in two ways.

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