Tanya Winson was made redundant by her employer while on maternity leave.
Winson claims the redundancy process was unfair and is seeking legal advice.
Tanya Winson worked for One NZ as an IT manager when she went on maternity leave.
She says the company’s reasons for making her redundant while on leave were unlawful.
One NZ says it managed the redundancy process fairly and in line with the law.
Winson is taking One NZ to the Employment Relations Authority.
A high-performing former executive at One NZ says she is taking her old employer to the Employment Relations Authority after she was made redundant while on maternity leave.
Tanya Winson, 44, was employed as a information and communication technology (ICT) manager for One NZ, previously knownas Vodafone, when the company embarked on a restructuring process that saw around 200 people made redundant.
At the time, she was on maternity leave and had been away from the business for about half the year she had planned to take off.
Now, she has no job and blames the company for disrupting her first year as a mum with the trauma of a redundancy.
During the redundancy process, Winson was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had a mastectomy earlier this month to remove her right breast and the 12cm tumour that had grown inside it.
She believes the breast cancer is linked to the stress caused by the redundancy process.
“It’s taken a huge toll on my mental health,” she told the Herald.
“I’ve been very angry and very frustrated for a long time now ... I’m trying to reduce my stress levels because now I’m a cancer patient. But I still have to see this through.”
Winson believes women on parental leave are “too easy a target for a cost-cutting exercise.”
“I want to make sure this doesn’t happen to other women because it’s awful.”
Tanya Winson with her daughter Ella Dalebrook. Tanya was made redundant while on maternity leave. Photo / Dean Purcell
One NZ said it won’t talk publicly about individual cases heading for the Employment Relations Authority. It said the restructuring that began in 2023 was focused on shaping the company to best serve its customers and saw around 200 redundancies.
There is no correlation between Ms Winson’s pregnancy and her role being included in the general redundancy restructuring
“Our focus remains on supporting the well being of our people while ensuring that all employment matters are managed with integrity and in line with our legal and ethical responsibilities and we are actively engaged in resolving this matter.”
The bid for parental leave
Australian-born Winson moved to New Zealand from London a fortnight before Covid-19 hit in 2020.
In September 2021, she began working as a contract ICT manager at One NZ at Smales Farm on Auckland’s North Shore.
“For a techie, it was a great group. It’s the crowd you want to be in.”
Winson’s position as a woman in a male-dominated tech industry was never an issue, she believed, and that seemed particularly the case at One NZ.
Then, said Winson, she found she was pregnant to partner Pete. She said what followed led her to form a belief she was being treated differently because of her pregnancy.
My ability to negotiate a wage was just gone. Tanya was pregnant - where else was I gonna go?
She said discussions about shifting from contract to permanent work that had been taking place for about a year took on new urgency for her.
“In order to qualify for parental leave you have to be permanent for six months.”
She said she had told a senior colleague “in confidence” that she was pregnant - but didn’t want that information passed to the manager who would be hiring her as a permanent staff member, in case it affected what they offered her.
One New Zealand - previously known as Vodafone - is based at Smales Farm on Auckland's North Shore. It told the Herald its employment matters are managed with integrity and in line with legal and ethical responsibilities. Photo / Michael Craig
However Winson said she believes the private information was shared with HR - and that the process of becoming permanent then appeared to drag.
At that stage, Winson said, she had not even had her 12-week scan, and she felt betrayed. “I didn’t want people to know. Why would HR know before my parents? I was very angry.”
She said it also had an impact on her ability to bargain. “We hadn’t sat down and discussed wages, so my ability to negotiate a wage was just gone. Tanya was pregnant - where else was I gonna go?”
While Winson did sign on as permanent, she said the process took longer than she expected and she was concerned she would not meet the six-month employment needed before parental leave would start.
Winson told the Herald: “It was horrific. I was losing sleep. It was eleventh-hour stuff. It was horrible. I couldn’t do anything about it.”
She said it caused heightened anxiety during her pregnancy.
In the end, One NZ waived the six-month period and she was able to take parental leave.
Redundancy - ‘can they do that?’
Winson went on parental leave in May 2023 when her daughter Ella was born - and all appeared well until a call in November to tell her she was being made redundant.
“The immediate reaction was, ‘can they do that?’. So I went on Google and found out they can’t do that.”
In her opinion, the company was barred by law from making her redundant while she was on parental leave - unless events transpired while she was on leave that made retaining her role untenable for the company.
“Surprisingly, you can let someone go and make them redundant whilst on parental leave but only if some large event has happened between you signing a contract saying that yes, you’ll keep them, you’ll keep their job open and you’ll keep them there. If some large event happens that was unforeseen, that means that the role is now redundant.
Tanya Winson was an IT manager at One NZ and on maternity leave when made redundant in 2024. Photo / Dean Purcell
“So when I looked at the restructure PowerPoint … the reasons for the restructure were all macroeconomic conditions. They were interest rates declining, profit margins accompanied with charts that showed that these conditions predated me signing a parental leave contract by years.
“And so I was facing the uncertainty of not having a job to return to as a new mother. I was facing the anger of knowing that they shouldn’t be allowed to do this and what they were doing was very plainly - in my opinion and the internet’s opinion - wrong.”
Winson said she was immersed in being a new mother with its competing joys and challenges when the redundancy process effectively hauled her back to work.
You stress out a lactating mother and the breast milk reduces. I struggled to feed Ella and I’ll never forgive them for that
That included the 77-page information pack that set out falling profits against a challenging economy, and sitting in on Teams meetings with - in her opinion - HR staff who seemed poorly-prepared to discuss redundancy with someone on parental leave.
A transcript of a call with One NZ’s HR staff that Winson recorded says she was told: “So what we’re looking to do is we are disestablishing your role. So the idea being that the course of the business is changing and all the economics, sort of outlook, isn’t great.”
At one stage the One NZ HR worker said: “You can you tell I haven’t done this before eh?”
She said she was not given enough notice for the meeting, was sent her redundancy letter on systems she hadn’t accessed for months and there were no alternative roles offered to her.
Winson said she also struggled to find out what her redundancy package was worth, as company documentation didn’t include details and the in-house calculator tool was difficult to access.
In another conversation recorded with HR, the transcript shows Winson questioned why the company hadn’t provided specific details on what she would be paid in redundancy.
Winson: “Keep in mind I don’t have a work laptop, and also I’m supposed to be on leave so I’ve got limited time between naps and breastfeeding to look at this,” she told the HR manager. “I’m getting pretty frustrated that the decision has been made to make me redundant but no one has actually done the admin to be able to inform me of what that would look like.
“It just seems like you’re making me do the work for it, and I can’t actually work the calculator at the moment from my phone.”
The HR manager responded: “That’s okay. What I can do is I can send you a screenshot of your estimate amount.”
Winson said the impact of the redundancy and resulting stress was difficult to manage as a new mum. “You stress out a lactating mother and the breast milk reduces. I struggled to feed Ella and I’ll never forgive them for that.
“I suffered anxiety for the first time in my life - anxiety I couldn’t control. I’d never failed to modulate my stress levels before and I’d managed contracts worth $100m. It was the injustice of it all - it was infuriating.
“I don’t think anyone thinks that someone can be made redundant without feeling some level of stress. You’re gonna get stressed out about finding that all of a sudden you don’t have a job.
“It was bad enough to be made redundant. And now I have breast cancer.”
Tanya Winson with her daughter Ella aged 2. Photo / supplied
Winson said her breasts were checked and cleared during pregnancy. Then, after she stopped breastfeeding, concerns were raised during a regular doctor’s visit. A mammogram confirmed the lump found by the doctor was concerning. “It was bad. All the results have been bad.”
Surgery and the path forward
The day after speaking with the Herald, Winson had her right breast and lymph nodes removed in a full mastectomy. Further testing is being done to find whether the surgery has stopped the cancer’s progress.
Asked why she blamed the stress arising from the employment process, she said: “It’s the only negative in my life and I now have a Grade 1 slow-growing tumour that has grown to 12cm in size.”
Winson said she linked the cancer to the anxiety and stress around both her departure on parental leave, and then the redundancy. She said she had read studies showing high levels of stress could impact on the immune system and create an environment in which cancer could flourish.
“This fight with One NZ has been the only major stressor in my life. My daughter is beautiful and healthy. My relationship with my fiance is great. We have no financial problems.
“The cause of cancer is unknown but it is well known that stress isn’t good for a cancer patient.”
When One NZ was asked to comment on Winson’s beliefs regarding the link between the redundancy process and her diagnosis, One NZ said it was saddened to learn of Winson’s health situation, but it could not comment specifically on the matter while it was before the ERA, and it was not qualified to express a medical opinion.
One NZ wished Winson well in her health journey.
Winson was hopeful the cancer diagnosis and surgery would speed the case through the ERA process.
“If I’m lucky that will be done in two months and I’ll sit before the ERA, tell this story, show the evidence.”
Winson’s complaint also included what she believed were incomplete responses to Privacy Act requests for information relating to her employment. She has also lodged a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
The information Winson believed was missing were discussions she believed her senior colleague held after she told him she was pregnant.
She said she had an email in which her new manager maintained an interest in employing her, suggesting there was an email asking if she was still wanted.
Winson said the email she believed existed had not emerged through current Privacy Act requests and she was challenging One NZ on the methods it had used to search its systems.
“There’s a huge amount of frustration and anger on my behalf. From the start, this has been mishandled and it’s been horrible for me, but I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
She said she wanted the ERA to review the process One NZ’s HR staff went through and to rule the redundancy as unlawful.
“I have a daughter - I don’t want her to go through this. I don’t want One NZ to do this to anyone else. I want them to realise that what they did was wrong and that they can handle things better.
“The way that my pregnancy was handled was awful. My conversion to perm[anent] was awful, my redundancy was procedurally flawed and it was the wrong thing to do in the first place because the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act exists to stop this kind of thing happening because when you go on parental leave, you are vulnerable to being let go.”
Victoria University emeritus professor Gordon Anderson said employers had defences to making someone redundant while they were on parental leave.
He said the employer needed to prove there was no prospect of holding the employee’s job open or finding a comparable role for the person to step into.
However, Anderson said employment cases were highly “fact-dependent” and each case could turn on different points of evidence.
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.
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