Pregnancy and redundancy

Digger6

Hi people,

My wife is expecting our first child (she is 10 weeks pregenant) and this should be a really happy time for us.

However her firm have announced that they are making 60 people redundant.

We have not yet informed her employers that she is pregnant.

She is frightened to death that if she is made redundant she won't be able to get a job as she is pregnant.

Should we tell her employers that she is pregnant or will this make them more likely to make her redundant?

Can anyone offer any advise please?

lornz23

Hi Digger6,

If your wife is to tell her work before they make the cuts it will make it harder for them to get rid of her as they have to prove that it is not because she is pregs.

Good Luck!

honeypop

It shouldn't make any difference if she tells them or not, if she's selected for redundancy they can't change their mind just because they now know she's pregnant. Unfortunately being pregnant doesn't entitle you to stay in a job rather than get made redundant, if you'd have been made redundant anyway, if that makes sense.

She could tell them if she wanted to, nothing saying she shouldn't, but don't expect it to allow her to keep her job if she'd have been going anyway. On the plus side, it can't make them more likely to make her redundant so she shouldn't worry about that.

I was made redundant at 9 weeks, and managed to get another job starting when I was 13 weeks so it isn't impossible to get another job, thankfully. She doesn't have to disclose it to a new or prospective employer until the 15th week before baby is due anyway, so providing she isn't massively showing at interview stage she could get away with it (my new boss just thought I was 'chubby' lol). An alternative is temping until the baby is born, when I signed on with agencies, I told them I was pregnant and they said contract work for say 6 months, or mid-term temping was a good possibility as companies like to employ people as temps/contract workers who are not going to hassle for making the job permanent, so pregnant ladies are ideal as they know when they will be planning to stop working (for a while at least).

There are lots of threads on redundancy in pregnancy if you do a quick search, you should get lots of help from those.