A care worker has won a payout after she was fired for being pregnant by her female boss who claimed her ‘imbalanced’ hormones were making her ‘angry and unpleasant’ and caused five colleagues to quit.
Agnes Timbreza became pregnant soon after she began working for the Blue Crystal Care Agency, run by Lathangi Kathirkamathamby.
Four months into a caring placement she had told the ‘genuinely happy’ business owner, an employment tribunal heard.
But not long after Ms Kathirkamathamby claimed Miss Timbreza was ‘not pulling her weight’ and eventually fired her for not being ‘fit to work’, claiming she had breached health and safety rules.
However the tribunal heard that no health and safety risk assessment had been carried out in relation to Ms Timbreza’s pregnancy.
In a risk assessment produced later Ms Kathirkamathamby claimed the carer’s ‘hormone changes’ had caused five co-workers to leave.
The tribunal found that Ms Kathirkamathamby’s account was ‘inconsistent and implausible’ and the ‘explicit reason’ for Ms Timbreza’s dismissal was her pregnancy.
Ms Timbreza won her pregnancy discrimination claims for the lack of risk assessment and her firing.
Care agency boss Lathangi Kathirkamathamby (pictured) sacked her pregnant employee and claimed her ‘hormones’ made five other colleagues quit
The tribunal, held in Watford, heard that the Blue Crystal Care Agency placed people as care assistants and in April 2022 Miss Timbreza was assigned to the home of an elderly woman, referred to only as Mrs X.
She was one of two live-in carers for Mrs X who was paralysed from the neck down and required a hoist to move between her bed, a recliner and a wheelchair.
The carers were required to use the hoist together for health and safety reasons.
In August 2022, Miss Timbreza told Ms Kathirkamathamby she was pregnant and her boss was initially ‘geninuely happy’ for the care worker.
At the tribunal the business owner tried to claim that Miss Timbreza’s ‘attitude’ changed during her pregnancy and that five co-workers left because of her ‘hormones being imbalanced’.
Ms Kathirkamathamby alleged that the carer began sleeping more, taking longer breaks than she was allowed and did not do her job ‘adequately’.
However, Employment Judge Anthony Dick said he ‘did not accept’ these claims and that it was ‘implausible’ Ms Kathirkamathamby would not have taken action if Miss Timbreza had caused five ‘valued workers’ to leave.
The tribunal was told by Ms Kathirkamathamby that the carer was dismissed for using the hoist alone on multiple occasions and claimed she had discussed it with Miss Timbreza in a pregnancy risk assessment in November.
Miss Timbreza said she had only used the hoist alone once when her co-carer was on the phone for a ‘long time’ and could not help, and that no pregnancy risk assessment had ever been done.
In a written risk assessment dated November 2022 Ms Kathirkamathamby claimed that Ms Timbreza was at risk of injury due to ‘hormonal changes’, was ‘slamming doors’ and that the hormone changes were making her ‘angry and unpleasant’.
The tribunal concluded that the risk assessment was not contemporaneous as it included information that had ‘little to do’ with health and safety and Ms Kathirkamathamby’s evidence was ‘implausible and inconsistent’.
Judge Dick said: ‘The document contains some information which clearly has little or nothing to do with a risk assessment (such as being unpleasant to colleagues) and its contents are not in our view consistent with a document being contemporaneously recorded in the presence of [Ms Timbreza].
Agnes Timbreza was one of two live-in carers who looked after a woman paralysed from the neck down (stock image)
‘The evidence presented by [Ms Kathirkamathamby] was inconsistent and implausible. [She] told us that the document was completed at the same time as [the carer] was spoken to about the reports [she] had received about [her] using the hoist on her own.
‘We consider it implausible that two such different processes would be completed side-by-side and recorded only in a written risk assessment.
‘It would be unusual for such a document to be completed on 25 November when, as we have found and as [Ms Kathirkamathamby] accepted, [she] was informed of the pregnancy in August.’
On November 26 Ms Timbreza requested time off for antenatal appointments but when her boss called her back two days later the carer was told she was being dismissed as she was not ‘fit to work’.
The tribunal concluded that the sacking was a result of Miss Timbreza’s pregnancy and that the failure to do a risk assessment was ‘choice’ not just an oversight.
EJ Dick said: ‘The explicit reason, we have found, that [Ms Kathirkamathamby] gave [the carer] for her dismissal was that she was not fit to work, i.e.. because of her pregnancy.
‘Further evidence that this was in the [business owner’s] mind is that in the ‘risk assessment’ document that she prepared… [she] purported to attribute some of the claimant’s actions to ‘hormones’.
‘[Ms Kathirkamathamby] has failed to prove that the dismissal was ‘in no sense whatsoever’ because of the pregnancy – we simply did not accept her evidence about the reasons for the dismissal.
‘[Ms Timbreza’s] pregnancy was in our judgment at the very least one of the reasons for her dismissal.’
Compensation will be decided at a later date.
