Pregnancy and maternity discrimination: obligations for employers

Pregnancy and maternity discrimination can create a lot of unnecessary distress and upset for employees who are already experiencing life changing events. In many cases, employers can unintentionally discriminate because they are unfamiliar with the law. This document outlines some of the key obligations for employers. Remember, how these are handled is often just as important as making sure they happen:

1.Make sure employees are not discriminated against because of their pregnancy.

  1. Make sure employees are not discriminated against because of their maternity leave or pay.
  1. Make sure employees are not subjected to comments and behaviour regarding their pregnancy or maternity which they find offensive.
  1. Make sure policies and practices in the workplace don’t put an employee at a disadvantage because of pregnancy or maternity leave. Often this is unintentional.
  1. Understand that it is not uncommon for a complaint of pregnancy and maternity discrimination to also involve separate or overlapping complaints of sex discrimination.
  1. If employees make, support or give evidence about pregnancy and maternity discrimination, make sure they don’t suffer disadvantage, harm or loss for doing so.
  1. Do not ask a job candidate questions of a personal nature unrelated to the role and their application. They may imply discrimination.
  1. Make sure a place is provided for a breastfeeding employee to rest (this can’t be the toilet).
  1. Any employee can be dismissed for the correct reasons and with the correct process, but make sure that dismissals are not influenced by the employee’s pregnancy or maternity.
  1. Be very careful in managing a process to restructure an organisation where an employee who is absent because of maternity leave is being considered for redundancy.

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Pregnancy and maternity discrimination: key points for the workplacefrom: