A truck driver who was fired by her employer via text message after she told him she was pregnant has won her case in court.

The employer, whose company is listed as a numbered corporation that transports bulk materials, did not even show up for the hearing before the Administrative Labour Tribunal.

The court waited for the employer, but to no avail.

As the employer did not provide any valid reason for his absence, the court proceeded with the investigation of the case and decided in favour of the worker.

The woman was hired on Aug. 1, 2020 as a truck driver. The relationship with her employer was "friendly" until Oct. 9, 2020, when she informed him by text message that she was pregnant, would soon see a doctor and would work until the date he told her she could go on maternity leave.

In court, the worker said that from that moment on, the employer's attitude towards her changed.

A few days later, colleagues, including a foreman, told her that the employer openly called her a "good-for-nothing" and that he had also "warned his colleague not to do as she did and not to get pregnant with the first person who came along," the tribunal reported.

The employee then confronted her employer, who denied these facts. She did not let him finish and ended the phone conversation abruptly, the court reports.

The employer "dismissed her the same evening by text message," the administrative judge reported.

The employee replied that he couldn't do that because she was pregnant. He replied that he had already made his decision the day before.

The employer did not appear before the tribunal to give his version of the facts, despite a summons to do so, but the tribunal nevertheless had access to the text-message exchanges between the parties.

"The tribunal established that the right exercised by the worker and the sanction to which she was subjected, namely dismissal, were indeed concurrent," the tribunal ruled.

"In this context, it was up to the employer to show that the termination of the employee's employment was based on 'another just and sufficient cause,' which it did not do."

The tribunal, therefore, concluded that the employee was indeed terminated because she was pregnant. It accepted her complaint, set aside the Oct. 15, 2020 dismissal and ordered the employer to reinstate her in her job, with all her rights.

It also ordered the employer to pay her the equivalent of the salary and other benefits she lost as a result of the dismissal.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on July 11, 2022.