Woman Awarded $349,000 in Pregnancy Discrimination Suit : Employment: Some say the case symbolizes a growing trend among companies of laying off expectant mothers.

Leslie Smith thought she had a solid career ahead of her with a financial services company. As a regional account manager, the Long Beach resident said she got difficult assignments, received bonuses and raises on a regular basis, and heard nothing but praise from her supervisor.

Then she got pregnant.

On May 31, 1991, when Smith was seven months pregnant, officials with Great Northern Insured Annuity laid her off. But Smith, the only one laid off, called it discrimination and filed a lawsuit.

Earlier this month, a panel of three arbitrators from the securities industry agreed with Smith and awarded her $349,000 in lost earnings, damages and attorney fees. The panel found that the company, a subsidiary of the Weyerhaeuser Co., was guilty of discriminating against her because she was pregnant. They also found that the action caused her emotional distress and that the firm had acted in bad faith.

“I’m very happy. It was a lot to go through, and I’m glad it’s over,” said Smith, 33. “I didn’t do it for the money. I felt I had to take a stand.”

Each year, thousands of women say they are demoted or fired because they choose to have children, despite a 14-year-old federal act prohibiting discrimination on the basis of pregnancy.

The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission receives about 3,000 such claims a year, said spokeswoman Janice Hearty. Of those, the commission finds evidence of wrongdoing in fewer than 4% of the cases, she said. But the commission does secure benefits, such as back pay, for complainants in 24% of the claims, Hearty said.

C. Renee Manes, one of Smith’s attorneys, said pregnancy discrimination cases often do not reach a courtroom or an arbitration hearing.

“Unfortunately, instances of (termination because of pregnancy) probably happen very frequently, but they are difficult to prove,” Manes said.

Smith--who gave birth to a girl in July, 1991--said her first inkling of trouble came less than a month before she was laid off. She was talking with her boss, who had recently returned from maternity leave herself, about which accounts Smith would handle when she returned from leave. Smith said she was told: “We don’t have to offer you your job back.”

Smith said she talked with the company’s Human Resources Department and was assured that she could return to her job.

But on May 31, 1991, in a meeting with two company officials, Smith was told that she would be laid off.

“I was absolutely stunned,” she said.

“They said they had a need to downsize, but the more I thought about it, I realized I didn’t get a good answer,” Smith said. “It became clear to me that it was because of my pregnancy.”

Company spokesman Edward Wiles said that Smith was laid off because the company was decreasing its staff in the Long Beach office and that her accounts were either being discontinued or did not need the same degree of service. Smith was the only person laid off, but others who left the company were not replaced, Wiles said.

He denied that Smith’s supervisor had told Smith that she might not have a job after her maternity leave.

“We thought the reasons we had given for Ms. Smith’s termination were valid reasons, and we feel the arbitration panel was wrong,” said Wiles, the Seattle-based company’s vice president and counsel. The arbitrators’ decision is final, however.

After she filed suit in U.S. District Court, Smith said, word of her action traveled quickly through financial services companies, and she had trouble getting hired again.

It took her a year and about 150 applications to find a new job with a major California-based bank.

“I never had trouble finding a job before,” she said.

Fear of being blacklisted is one reason many women do not file lawsuits or claims, said Barbara Otto, spokeswoman for the Cleveland-based 9 to 5, National Assn. of Working Women.

And the number of discrimination cases appears to be increasing because of the economic downturn.

“During this recession, pregnant women are being targeted for layoffs,” Otto said. In California, for example, the number of complaints filed with 9 to 5 about pregnancy discrimination increased from an average of 90 per month last year to 100 per month this year, an 11% increase, Otto said.

In the past three years, the group has averaged more than 15,000 calls from across the country complaining of pregnancy discrimination, Otto said.

“There seems to be this corporate mentality that as soon as a woman becomes pregnant, she won’t be able to do her job,” she said.

Abby Leibman of the California Women’s Law Center said pregnancy discrimination is one of the most frequent complaints the center receives.

“We’ve all been socialized into thinking that a man’s reality of work is everyone’s reality of work. And men don’t get pregnant,” said Leibman, executive director of the Los Angeles-based center that deals with women’s civil rights issues. “So if you’re asking for a maternity leave, they think of it as being special.”