A Vancouver woman is speaking out about her experience with workplace discrimination while she was pregnant and working at the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch.
Harmony Powell said she became pregnant while working as a project manager at the company but she said it was a difficult pregnancy.
She said she suffered various physical symptoms, including dizziness, fatigue, brain fog and exhaustion that impacted her ability to perform her duties effectively at work.
Powell said she told her supervisor, Ms. Fariba Pacheleh, of her pregnancy in February, 2019, and she said she told Pacheleh that she had faced significant physical and mental health challenges related to her first pregnancy in 2017. In addition, she said she miscarried and lost twins in her second pregnancy in June 2018.
However, Powell said her supervisor was not accommodating, marking her as absent without leave and giving her a letter of formal reprimand for performance issues not long before her due date.
According to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, Pacheleh was “frustrated by the unpredictability of the Complainant’s absences, the amount of time the Complainant was socializing while at work, and the fact that the Complainant was not entering her hours in her timesheets.”
On June 5, 2019, Pacheleh made a note to herself, setting out in part the following:
“Harmony Powell always uses different excuses for being late, especially after weekends she shows up around 11 or even noon. She used all sorts of excuses before and after her pregnancy the excuses changed to need for sleeping more, etc….The amount of work she is doing is one/third of another (project manager) in the same level, however, she suggests she doesn’t have the capacity to take anything else out but have time to spend lots of time socializing!” [sic]
Powell ended up having to go on short-term disability on July 8, 2019, through to the start of her maternity leave, which was scheduled to start in early September.
She said that on Aug. 6, Pacheleh sent her a letter, advising her of a meeting regarding her workplace performance when she returns from maternity leave.
“To receive something like that, after what was already a tremendous ordeal, was really quite devastating,” Powell told Global News.
“My daughter was set to be born and I didn’t know if she would be ok, and now I had to deal with, like, this, and my employer knew all of that, and it felt like who I was or what affected me didn’t matter.”
Powell took the issue that she was discriminated against at work due to her pregnancy to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal in 2020.
In 2024, the tribunal ruled in her favour.
She is now taking the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch to court, asking to be compensated for how she was treated and fighting a demand from the company that she repay the $37,000 salary top-up given to her during her maternity leave because she did not return to work.
Powell told Global News she has already spent $25,000 on lawyers and is now proceeding to trial without legal help.
However, she said she is fighting for herself, her daughter and other women.
The B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch told Global News it cannot comment on the case.