Unfair treatment during maternity leave?
I’m not sure if this is the best place to post this… my boss just sent me a message to let me know they are promoting my maternity cover person to manager of the department so i will be coming back to work under her.
For context I built the role from the ground up and was essentially doing a management role before going on maternity leave (working a lot harder than I should’ve been while heavily pregnant might I add) without a change of contract or wage because they were very much skirting around the word ‘manager’ consciously and I knew they would just shoot me down if I pushed for it before going on maternity leave anyway. However now the official management position has been given to someone else and I haven’t even been approached with the choice of going for the job.
I think from a legal standpoint I don’t have a leg to stand on because the job I’m contracted to do will technically still be there for me, but in reality my job has been taken from me because I dared to have a baby and I’m now going to be someone’s assistant.
It’s also worth noting that a man who works in my department (who is paid more because he does a specialist job) is being paid his full wage for his paternity leave where I got no extras beyond statutory. I understand he only gets 2 weeks and it’s not the same as looking at topping someone’s wage up for 9months - 1 year but there’s no reason they couldn’t top up my pay for 2 weeks too.
I just feel really undervalued right now. I think it stings more because I’ve already given so much of myself over to my baby and I was actually looking forward to going back to work and feeling more like myself and now I just feel like I’ve lost that too.
Has anyone else experienced feeling pushed out of their role while on maternity leave and how did you handle it?