Patricia Nurse

A former Pizza Express female employee in Lincoln is taking action after alleging that the firm squeezed her out of a job because she got pregnant, a tribunal has heard.

Judge John McMillan was told at the opening of a three-day employment tribunal held at Lincoln Magistrates that claimant Jennifer Sammut (28) has taken action based on maternity discrimination.

Miss Sammut was a chef at Pizza Express and had hoped to return after the birth of her two-year-old daughter Bella in 2012.

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Read the court reports from day one, day two, day three, our roundup and our analysis

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— Update at 5pm on April 14

The woman claims her employer discriminated against her because she was pregnant, and says she felt bullied before her maternity leave started, the tribunal was told.

Jennifer Sammut said she was given a dressing down for being late one morning at Pizza Express, even though she was three minutes early.

“I was reprimanded, but I was not late,” she said. “I wasn’t wrong, but I felt I needed to explain that I would have been there earlier If I hadn’t had to stop to be sick. I was told morning sickness was not an excuse.”

The tribunal heard that Miss Sammut felt exhausted during the early stages of her pregnancy. It was put to her that her exhaustion was noticeable and her employer suggested she be moved from her job as chef in the kitchen to waitressing.

“That is not what I was told,” she said. “I was told I was being demoted to waiting staff. I felt bullied into taking that demotion. Nothing was mentioned about my exhaustion. As my pregnancy progressed, it was felt that my belly was going to get bigger, and there was limited space in the kitchen.”

Miss Sammut wanted flexible hours to suit her child care arrangements when she was due to return to work in December 2012, but none could be found to suit, the tribunal was told.

Miss Sammut mentioned that a chef brought in to cover her maternity leave was given a permament contract, and she felt she would not be welcome back.

It was put to her that the new chef’s contract was changed because he was replacing hours lost by another colleague who had taken time off sick with stress, and there was nothing sinister in the appointment, the tribunal was told.

Pizza Express representative Ian Hartley said it was a question of balance. The company could not give her the 16 flexible hours across the day she wanted, but Miss Sammut said she had been willing to compromise or take other jobs such as cleaning, but was rejected. This could only be possible if she gained hours at the expense of other staff losing hours.

The hearing is set to last for two more days.

Read the latest from the second day of the hearing

Any politician who thinks they can win in 2015 by attacking adult tobacco consumers, should think again. Labour’s blanket smoking ban, for example, didn’t do much for former Labour MP Gillian Merron who was soon booted out because of it.

As a lifelong Lincolnian, and a former Labour supporter until 2007, I find it disturbing that any politician just swallows propaganda without having the intellect to look behind it, nor the manners to want to represent all potential constituents including those who smoke.

To make the case for the defecation of tobacco packaging, which includes images of excrement and urine in a toilet bowl, the anti-smoker industry uses paid-for propaganda which when scrutinised is found to be false.

Of course if they never use the product, ignorant politicians who are being misled wouldn’t care that adult consumers will have their rights to brand recognition, price comparison and product information stolen via plain or standardised packaging.

In addition, such an infantile idea if pushed into law will encourage the already thriving black market to grow and those managing it won’t ask kids how old they are, like regulated, accountable and responsible shopkeepers do at present.

Young people are being shoved into the hands of ruthless criminals to an unregulated contaminated and inferior product because of this backward piece of immature thinking. It has shown that it does not reduce smoking rates but does drive the product underground where fake brands are produced and sold easily to minors with all good protection to date removed in one fell swoop.

And scroll down to Day 15 at this link and you will see an Australian grass roots consumer who says smoking rates have not dropped but consumers are even denied the right to know how much tar and nicotine are in their product of choice.

Once the nannies and puritans get their way on stealing one consumer group’s rights, they can move on to others such as those who like the occasional glass of wine, tot of whisky, or can of beer as public health moves to attack alcohol, chocolate and who knows what else in this age of healthist paranoia on smoking, drinking and obesity.

Don’t tell me that smokers cost the NHS more. They don’t cost nearly as much as those who don’t smoke. Half of us don’t die young either. People like myself who have smoked for a lifetime, longer in fact than politicians like Lucy Rigby, who recently showed her support for such an illiberal and dangerous measure, have been breathing. We have paid far more in tax over several decades than we will ever get back in healthcare at the end of our lives. And to deny us that is downright churlish, nasty and mean.

There is nothing worse than immature politicians who would sleep walk into criminalisation of consumers and that is where plain packaging will take us – another step towards it. If I hear another claiming that the current government has broken a promise to make plain packaging law, I think I’ll spontaneously combust.

There never was such a promise, only a commitment to consultation before deciding on legislation. A staggering 500,000 grass roots consumers said no. 200,000 quangocrats and healthist astroturfers wanted it and quite rightly, the coalition listened to both sides of the argument and found the anti-smokers’ lacking – hence the very sensible delay to see what happens in Australia before condemning our kids to criminals and a loss of billions of pounds to the Treasury unnecessarily.

Politicians should remember that smokers not only enjoy smoking, they vote too and they will not vote for anyone who sets out to attack them more than they are being attacked already. They just want to be left alone.