Dear Sir / Madam,
This is a LIVE CASE for your kind advice.
1) An employee is working with a BIG MNC firm as third party Full time contract employee since two years, BIG MNC being the Principal employer and there's a third party Manpower Company as employer. From Date of Joining 07th March 2016, till date. In March 2017 the employee had earned a very good increment (from 26000 to 35000 INR per month) which is indicative of her above average performance. The project on which Empoloyee is working on is a Flagship HR initiative by that BIG MNC so it's not likely to end very soon. Three managers have changed and she has still managed to adapt to each one and complete her tasks successfully.
2) In January 2018 Employee informed her employer that she is 8 week pregnant and is more than willing to work till 9th month of her pregnancy and resume as soon as her maternity leave ends. After this meeting, the manager started neglecting the employee and after two weeks of waiting for a response, the employee got text messages viz "What about the Mat leave?, I didn't get you, will extend your contract till April 15th, keeping in mind the larger deliverables boss has agreed to extend by one month" . Extending by one month suggests that her contract ends on 6th March 2018.
3) As there was no mention of not extending the contract before pregnancy information was shared, it is very much apparent that they want employee to leave because she'll cost them 6 months' extra salary. Not to mention that all On-payroll managers have an average salary of 3 to 4 lacs per month.
Question: 1) Does she have any legal claim on extension of contract and receiving Maternity Benefits and a right to uninterrupted employment?
2) If legally valid, what steps the employee should take to firmly make her position clear to the manager.
Please suggest something out of the box so that the employee doesn't have to suffer losing her job due to this discremination.
Regards
