A MOTHER who lost her home after bosses cut her hours when she fell pregnant and refused to pay her maternity pay has won her case at an employment tribunal.

Pauline Rodger and her three children - including her newborn daughter - had to move in with a family friend after she got into financial trouble due to the actions of home care firm Appropriate Services.

Her monthly wages were cut by hundreds of pounds due to the reduction in hours and she received nothing from the company while on maternity leave - despite the fact they are able to reclaim almost all of the money from HMRC.

Ms Rodger, who was a supervisor with the firm, has now been awarded more than £35,000 after winning her case for pregnancy and maternity discrimination, but she may receive none of it because the business is due to be struck off the companies register.

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The 34-year-old, from Castlemilk, said that“everything fell apart” in July last year when she began her maternity leave and had to give up her home because she had no income.

“I was panicking, it was terrible, especially being pregnant,” she said. “You start to make plans of how your house is going to look and where the baby is going to sleep and then all that was gone all of a sudden."

The tribunal heard that Ms Rodger began working for the firm in November 2017 and had a contract of 35 hours per week.

She discovered she was pregnant in February the following year and emailed her manager Fredrick Rodgers - the husband of the company’s owner Suad Abdullah - to tell him.

Soon after, when the supervisor arrived for work one morning, Mrs Abdullah told her that her hours were being cut from 35 per week to 14.

Ms Rodger was issued with a new contract but she refused to accept the changes, arguing that it would mean a drop in earnings of more than £800 a month before tax and that, due to the timing of the change, her maternity pay would also be reduced.

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Despite this, her hours were reduced and she worked 14 hours a week “under protest” from the beginning of April.

In a written judgment on the case, employment judge Claire McManus said: “It was clear from the evidence that had the claimant not been pregnant, she would not have had her hours reduced."

Judge McManus awarded Ms Rodger more than £10,000 for pregnancy and maternity discrimination and £25,000 for victimisation.

Appropriate Services tried to claim that the changes to Ms Rodger’s pay were due to the business’s poor financial situation, but Judge McManus refused to accept this.

The Herald and Times tried to contact the firm but has received no response.