Unislim has been ordered to pay €9,000 to a part-time fitness trainer after she returned from maternity leave and was issued with a new contract changing her employment "beyond recognition".

Making a finding of gender-based discrimination against the firm, a Workplace Relations Commission official wrote she was surprised that a business which "perhaps garners more enthusiasm amongst women than men" had "so little understanding of how important it is that women should not be allowed to fall behind" for taking maternity leave.

The tribunal heard that the complainant in the case, Marsha Flannery, had worked for Unislim Ltd since 2016.

She worked as part of its core head office team and led two classes in a ten-hour working week in operation when she went out on maternity leave around May 2019.

She had been due to return to work in March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and the firm shut down, remaining on sick leave for a time before going on layoff from September that year, the tribunal heard.

Ms Flannery took maternity leave again from December 2020 to June 2021 and again contacted her employer again to discuss a return to work.

Adjudicating officer Penelope McGrath noted that the company's business had been "decimated by the Covid pandemic" and that there were "very few classes" being taught throughout the period.

Although Ms Flannery had previously done two in-person classes a week on a ten-hour contract, the employer proposed she either take on one extra remote class or be paid for six hours a week to do two classes, the tribunal heard.

Ms Flannery told the tribunal she was "not happy" with what Ms McGrath noted were "seemingly new terms and conditions" in a letter of agreement issued to her which included class attendance targets, review clauses and time limits.

A new contract of employment was also issued to Ms Flannery which "purported to set a new start date of September 2021, discounting her start date of 2016, with a preliminary probationary period", Ms McGrath wrote.

"The complainant could see that her service with the company was to be lost," the adjudicating officer added.

When the complainant questioned this the company wrote back to state that she "had not been giving classes since May of 2019 and was meant to have been back to work post-maternity leave in November 2019", according to correspondence to the tribunal.

The tribunal took evidence from the company's CEO, identified only as "FG" in the written decision.

FG said the pandemic had Unislim's business model at a standstill, with just eight of its instructors getting remote classes running and just 20 of 250 weekly classes getting ahead.

She said she wanted Ms Flannery back to work, but the company's financees were in a "precarious state" and it did not need the complainant back in the office.

Two classes for six hours pay "seemed a fair option", she said.

The CEO accepted in her evidence that the contract sent to Ms Flannery with a new start date was a "mistake", adding that she "had not taken legal advice" on it.

In her findings, Ms McGrath wrote that there was "nothing inherently wrong" with an offer of reduced hours in the circumstances of a return to work after the pandemic.

However, she wrote that the new contract issued to the complainant meant her employment was being "changed beyond recognition".

Ms McGrath added that Unislim "verged almost on being critical of the complainant's having had children" in one message about accommodating the complainant's "lifestyle needs" and another stating: "You last worked 1st of May 2019 - which is over two years ago."

"It is greatly surprising given the nature of the respondent's enterprise (which perhaps garners more enthusiasm amongst women than men), that there would be so little understanding of how important it is that women should not be allowed to fall behind or otherwise disadvantaged in the workplace because they take maternity leave for their health, and for the health of their baby," Ms McGrath wrote.

She found Ms Flannery had made out a case of discrimination on the grounds of gender and family status under the Employment Equality Act 1998 and that the respondent had "failed to demonstrate that there has been no infringement of the principle of equal treatment".

Ms McGrath ordered Unislim to pay the complainant €9,000 in compensation.