In the Netherlands, a pregnant employee was told that her fixed-term employment contract would not be renewed. A day after the notice, her manager informed her by WhatsApp that the reason was that she was absent a lot and she also needed to be there for her baby after she gave birth, which would be difficult, if not impossible, to combine with her work.
According to the employee, her employer was guilty of prohibited gender discrimination and therefore of serious culpable acts. She sought an award of fair compensation of over EUR 35,000.
Sub-district court: pregnancy was probably the reason for discontinuing the employment contract
According to the sub-district court, the manager's WhatsApp message suggested that the employer did not renew the employment contract because of the employee's pregnancy and/or her future motherhood. Indeed, the message specifically referred to that motherhood and made a direct connection between the employee's absence due to caring for her child and her availability to the employer.
According to the employer, however, the WhatsApp message had to be viewed in a broader context; the manager had allegedly sent it out of spite because the employer had rejected his request to reconsider the termination of his own employment contract. However, the sub-district court found that this otherwise unsubstantiated explanation was insufficient to accept that the WhatsApp message had been drafted out of spite and that it misrepresented the facts.
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