It started like any other Tuesday on maternity leave: a messy breakfast table, the mad rush to get out the door for my toddler’s daycare dropoff, the race back home to put my son down for a nap. But just as I stopped to take a break, my phone rang. On the other end of the line was my boss, who after briefly enquiring about how I was faring on maternity leave, asked how I’d feel about taking a voluntary redundancy from my TV news job of almost 11 years.
The call came as a surprise, but not a total shock. There’d been reports in the media in the weeks prior about how my network was planning to make mass job cuts in order to save tens of millions of dollars. But being on maternity leave with my second baby, I’d thought that I’d be out of the mix. Like many before me, I’d wrongly assumed that being pregnant or on maternity leave would exclude me from any large scale redundancies.
I was given a few days to think things over before I ultimately decided to accept. A few things made up my mind for me. For one, I’d already been feeling anxious about how to juggle a demanding TV news role with the logistics of daycare drop-off and pick-up, sessional kinder and the bedtime routine. And I’d also been toying with the idea of trying something new, but had never had the courage to leave the industry I loved and had worked hard to break into. To me, the offer felt like the push I needed.
After I shared my news on social media, I quickly learned that my situation was hardly unique - and that I’d actually been lucky to be offered a voluntary redundancy. On Instagram, my DMs were flooded with women who’d been given no notice or choice about their redundancies, all handed to them while they were freshly postpartum.
There was the senior manager who called her workplace to discuss her return to work only to be offered two days of receptionist work instead of her old role. The new mum who was told she had no job to come back to when her baby was just a few weeks old. The communications coordinator whose job was quickly re-advertised even though she’d been told the role no longer existed.
Breakfast radio host Annabelle Brett recalls being made redundant moments after she’d brought her baby into the office. “I was about two months postpartum at the time and all the other shows in my network that were the same as mine had already been let go,” Brett says. “I’d been liaising with my boss a bit, asking if it was going to happen to us and he kept reassuring me that it wasn’t. Finally I got asked to come in for a meeting and I didn’t get asked for a support person so I thought it’s not going to be that kind of meeting so I went in with my baby, and it was that kind of meeting.”
Employment lawyer Penny Parker, a senior associate at Maurice Blackburn, said the practice of making women redundant while pregnant or on maternity leave is “devastatingly common”.
“We have clients that come in all the time when typically it's towards the end of their leave, and they’re sort of gearing up mentally to turn their whole life upside down, put their child into daycare, go through that transition, bracing themselves for the juggle and all of a sudden they’re put in a position where that’s no longer an option,” says Parker, who is a new mum herself. “It’s incredibly difficult and in my view can be really devastating.”
Parker stresses that it’s not automatically unlawful for a workplace to make an employee who is either pregnant or on maternity leave redundant. Instead, it is unlawful if the employee is terminated specifically because they’re on parental leave.
“One of the things that makes it really obvious you’ve been made redundant because you’re on leave is if you’re the only one. Of course, it’s much harder to prove that you’re being targeted if you’re part of a broader restructure,” she says.
New mums who believe they have been targeted unfairly should seek legal advice immediately. Fair Work Australia provides a 21 day window to lodge a claim after which it is extremely rare to receive an extension. But many women may find they don’t have the grounds to make a claim.
Looking back, I can say my redundancy ultimately worked out for me. It gave me the opportunity to rethink my career, spend more time with my toddler and baby and pursue work I may never have had the confidence to chase otherwise. But that's not the point. If sharing my story has shown me anything, it's that this experience is far more common than many of us realise. That’s why it’s so important to talk about it, and know your rights, in case that unexpected phone calls ever comes.
Estelle Griepink is a Melbourne based journalist, podcaster and mum to two kids under three. She shares her honest reflections on motherhood on Instagram @estellegriepink
