Israeli Labor Court Awards Mother More Than NIS 200,000 After Return From Maternity Leave

A Jerusalem labor court has ordered a power engineering company to pay a 38-year-old employee more than NIS 200,000 after it stripped her of management duties following her return from maternity leave and later fired her. Judge Rachel Brag-Hirschberg found the company acted in violation of Israel’s Women’s Employment Law and also discriminated against her because she was a parent, in breach of the Equal Employment Opportunities Law.

The employee, an architectural technician by training, began working for the company in December 2009 as a draftswoman. In early 2017 she was promoted to lead a team of draftswomen. She gave birth in January 2020 and extended her maternity leave, at her request, until September 1. When she returned, she discovered the team under her supervision had been dispersed and that she was assigned only drafting work, with her pay harmed. Three months later, she was summoned to a dismissal hearing, and her employment ended after she did not appear.

The company argued it had only wanted to place her on unpaid leave because of the COVID-19 outbreak, but she refused and effectively abandoned the job by failing to attend the hearing. The judge rejected that account, saying the evidence showed the loss of her authority stemmed from her choice to extend maternity leave, not from the pandemic. She wrote that the manager decided he no longer wanted to wait for her return, reassigned the projects and staff she had overseen, and even promoted another employee to team leader.

The court also accepted her claim that she was paid less, and described the case as a serious violation of maternity protections. Judge Brag-Hirschberg said the company deliberately denied her a real opportunity to reintegrate, instead giving her “busywork” that set her back professionally, despite more than a decade of service and her only “offense” being that she exercised her right to extend maternity leave. On the discrimination claim, the court held that the firing was influenced by her status as a parent who needed occasional time off for her newborn. The company must pay about NIS 190,000 in compensation, plus NIS 18,000 in legal costs and attorney’s fees.