An HR executive made redundant while pregnant and later sent a line of laughing emojis by her boss has been awarded more than £21,000 by an employment tribunal.
Claimant Ms Rezvani was among a group of employees who were suddenly made redundant without notice by Glasgow-based AHRO Scientific Publishing in September 2023.
Rezvani and other workers did not get paid for work carried out in August and received her June and July wages later than expected.
She began working at the publishing firm in February 2023. The company was managed by majority shareholder Dr A Yaro, who was not a director of the firm but referred to himself as director-general and Kalifa, an Arabic word meaning ruler or leader.
Pregnancy and redundancy
Solicitor made redundant after revealing pregnancy awarded £26k
Concerns about the company’s financial standing began to emerge in July when employees received their wages late. Yaro repeatedly told the claimant that the organisation was not making any money and he was looking for investors.
In August, Yaro told Rezvani that he needed to appoint onsite directors and asked whether she was interested. The claimant said that she did not think she could take on the role and revealed that she was pregnant. She informed him of the news formally by email later that month.
When employees were not paid at the end of August, many of them contacted Rezvani querying when they would receive their wages. Some decided to stop working around this time.
On 9 September 2023, Yaro emailed the claimant to ask her to disseminate a message to all employees. The email said that “a decision has been taken that staffs are made redundant for the next six weeks [sic]”, although a handful of employees would be retained, and that “those who worked in August would be paid after the modality of share sales have been completed”.
The employees who would be retained included a staff member who worked on care agency work that the claimant had been involved in and had previously been praised for.
As she had received the instruction to inform employees of their redundancy, the claimant understood that she was still employed for the time being. The employment tribunal agreed with this interpretation.
On 10 September, the claimant emailed Yaro several queries about who would be made redundant and what he meant by “six weeks”. She also reminded him that all employees would be eligible for a notice period and redundancy pay, and that a fair process should be followed.
He responded that staff would be “recalled after six weeks”, although the tribunal noted there was nothing in the company’s employment contracts that would allow for this.
The claimant had doubts about whether she still had a job. In an email on 12 September, she said: “If I did not tell you that I am pregnant, you would not think about making me redundant”. She received no response.
On 13 September Rezvani asked Yaro for her payslips and said he needed to pay the accountant so that P45s could be processed. He said the company was not in a position to pay the accountant.
She received no further messages until 22 September, when Yaro sent a WhatsApp message asking her to return her office key. Rezvani replied that she was still an employee and asked to meet the new management, to which Yaro said the management would not meet any staff on an individual basis and refused to pass her number on to them.
Rezvani then said she would wait until the new management got in touch with her directly to get the key, to which Yaro responded with a row of seven laughing emojis.
At this point, Rezvani believed her employment was terminated. She told the tribunal that the laughing emojis left her feeling without hope that the company would contact her and that the communications between 9 and 22 September caused confusion and stress. She was particularly distressed because she was now visibly pregnant and worried that she would be disadvantaged when applying for new roles.
The tribunal found that Yaro had “scoffed” at her when he sent the laughing emojis, and that his correspondence had been “steeped in ambiguity”.
It found that her dismissal amounted to unfavourable treatment because she was pregnant. Employment Judge Lesley Murphy said it was apparent Yaro had a change of attitude towards retaining her after she informed him of her pregnancy, noting that other staff members involved in the care work remained employed.
The Glasgow employment tribunal ordered the company to pay Rezvani £21,681.99 in compensation, including awards for injury to feelings, financial losses, breach of contract concerning failure to provide a redundancy notice period, unpaid wages and pay in lieu of untaken holiday allowance.
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