This article is general information, not legal advice. Every case is examined on its own facts, and every cause of action has its own limitation period.

In cases of dismissal during pregnancy or around reserve duty, two dates decide more than anything else. The first is the day the employer knew, of the pregnancy or of the call-up order. The second is the date on the dismissal notice. The Women's Labour Law and the Discharged Soldiers (Return to Work) Law are both built around the distance between those two dates, and around what is supposed to stand between them. In the dismissal of a pregnant employee, that document is a permit. Both laws give protection. In both it depends on conditions the law sets, and what remains to be examined in any given case is which of them is met.

The permit: the document the employer needs

The Women's Labour Law provides that an employer who wants to dismiss a pregnant employee, in circumstances the law defines, needs a permit in advance from the officer in charge of the Women's Labour Law at the Ministry of Labour. The permit is a procedure conducted in writing, and the employer has an interest of its own in it: an employer that obtained a permit arrives at the Labour Court with a decision that has already been examined once. It files an application, sets out the reason for the dismissal, and the officer examines it. If it turns out that the reason is connected to the pregnancy, the officer is not supposed to grant a permit. If no connection is found, the officer grants a permit and the employer may dismiss. The law does not forbid dismissing a pregnant employee in every situation. It passes the decision through a check by someone outside the company before it takes effect.

The duty to apply for a permit does not cover every employee. The law makes it conditional, among other things on how long the employee has worked for that employer, and that figure is checked on its own in every case before anything else. The protection itself reaches beyond the pregnancy: in circumstances the law defines it also applies to an employee undergoing fertility treatment, and to the period close to the return from maternity leave. Each of those periods has conditions of its own.

A permit the officer granted establishes one thing: that no connection was found between the dismissal and the pregnancy. About the employer's other assertions it says nothing. An employee dismissed without the employer ever approaching the officer is in a different place altogether from one dismissed after an application was filed and examined, and that difference is usually the first thing our firm establishes.

Between the date the employer knew and the date on the dismissal notice, one document is supposed to stand: the permit. When it is missing, the examination begins there.

Reserve duty: the same distance, a different law

The Discharged Soldiers (Return to Work) Law works on the same distance between dates, from a different direction. It prohibits dismissing an employee while they are serving in the reserves, and sets a further protected period after the return, whose length depends on how long the service lasted. The mechanism differs from the one in the Women's Labour Law. The idea behind it is the same: that a dismissal close to service should not happen only because the employer managed without the employee, or to save the trouble of releasing them for the next call-up. An employer with a reason unconnected to the service can still act. The burden of showing that the reason is unconnected rests on the employer. How much time passed between the return and the notice, and how many days the service lasted, are the two figures that decide whether the case falls within the protected period at all, so they are checked before any other question.

What moves the answer: who decided, and when

A dismissal delivered days after the employer heard of the pregnancy, or a week after the return from reserve duty, immediately raises the question of a connection. Once that question is raised, the employer has to show that the reason was unconnected to the pregnancy or the service. A general statement is not enough. It needs facts: when the decision was taken, who took it, on what basis, and whether anyone wrote it down at the time. So the employer's defence rests on paper from before the notification, such as an email about closing the department sent before the employee told anyone, or the minutes of a management meeting with a date on them. Where paper like that exists, it supports the employer's account. Where it does not, its absence supports the employee's.

Hence the weight of the first date, the day the employer knew. Written notice, even a one-line email or a WhatsApp message with a photo of the call-up order, creates a date nobody can argue about afterwards. A conversation in the office kitchen rests on the memory of whoever was standing there, and on their willingness to confirm it before the Labour Court.

In other circumstances the picture reverses. A long-serving employee who told her manager about the pregnancy by email, and received a dismissal notice three weeks later with no permit application filed, comes to the examination with two dates and a missing document. An employer that filed an application, set out in it that the whole department was closing, attached the decision taken months earlier, and was granted a permit, comes with a process it can defend. The question then moves to what was written in the application, and whether what was written matches what happened.

The document between the two dates

When someone approaches our firm about this, two things are asked for first: the dismissal notice, with the date on it, and whatever shows when the employer knew. After them comes the question of whether a permit application was filed and, if the officer granted a permit, what it says. That can be established. Notes made in those same days, who said what and in which conversation, are read differently from notes written months later. Those days sometimes also bring a resignation letter ready for signature, or a termination agreement "by consent", with an offer to close things quickly. Do not sign either of them before someone has read them, because a signature like that usually closes causes of action the signer did not know were there. Some of the rights here depend on acting in time. Where a permit application exists, the examination moves to what is written in it. Where there is none, it starts from the question of why the employer did not apply, and that is a question an employer represented by our firm is asked in the first conversation as well.