A south Dublin car dealership has been ordered by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) to pay a pregnant teenage saleswoman it sacked €28,000 for discrimination, after finding management knew she was pregnant and that its claim that she wasn’t hitting sales targets of 20 cars per month as a new worker made “absolutely no sense”.
The management of Soraghan Auto Retail Ltd, trading as the Sandyford Motor Centre, had claimed the worker, Abbie Walsh, was expected to match a sales target of 60 cars a quarter which applied to all of its sales executives, and that she “ran out of road”.
Ms Walsh was 19 years old when she became pregnant this spring. She said she had previously worked selling “batteries, bulbs and wiper blades” at Halfords and had been told she wasn’t expected to meet the sales targets while serving her “apprenticeship” as a junior sales executive.
Upholding Ms Walsh’s complaint of maternity-related discrimination under the Employment Equality Act 1998, a Workplace Relations Commission adjudicator rejected the management’s defence, which she called “simply not credible”.
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“I do not accept the complainant ‘ran out of road eventually’ as stated by the respondent. I find the road was blocked for her,” the adjudicator wrote.
The company’s management denied all knowledge of Ms Walsh’s pregnancy before her WRC complaint, while Ms Walsh said she had informed her line manager early in April this year, a day before he left the company.
On May 8th, following a two-day absence due to morning sickness, a new line manager called her in and told her she was being let go.
She said the manager’s words were: “It’s just the way they feel . . . they’re not a fan of the secrets.”
Her response was: “My immune system’s on the floor, the only secret’s that I’m pregnant,” she said.
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“He just shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘They want you out today.’ I was waiting for him to backtrack, [tell me] ‘I’ll go upstairs and chat with the lads,’ but it did not faze him,” Ms Walsh said.
Nothing was said to her about performance at the meeting, the complainant said.
The complainant’s barrister, Seamus Collins, appearing instructed by Daniel O’Connell of Kean’s Solicitors, said the alleged “secrets” remark by the new line manager was “a clear allusion to her pregnancy and that the employer was aware”.
Principal dealer Bruce Soraghan said: “I don’t miss. I know there’s a difficult conversation coming our way. It would have been made clear to Abbie: ‘You’re not making the numbers.”
In her decision on the case, adjudicator Eileen Campbell said she was satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the company “became aware” of Ms Walsh’s pregnancy after she informed the former sales director and “certainly knew” after Ms Walsh told her new line manager when he called her in to sack her.
“It is simply not credible and makes absolutely no sense that the complainant would be expected to sell 60 cars in the first quarter of the year, whilst just in the door, on probation and undertaking all the other tasks delegated to her,” Ms Campbell added.
Upholding Ms Walsh’s complaint of pregnancy-related discrimination, Ms Campbell awarded her €28,000.
