Apparently, Medina Bardhi was replaced by a man making more than twice her salary when she took maternity leave.
In a complaint filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Medina Bardhi said she began suffering discrimination soon after telling Neumann that she was pregnant with her first child in 2016.
She said in the complaint that she had been hesitant to tell him early in her pregnancy but was forced to do so because of his smoking marijuana on the flights, potentially exposing her unborn child to second-hand smoke.
Bardhi said she was fired about six months after giving birth to her second child and just weeks after raising concerns about discrimination in connection with her pregnancy and maternity leave.
“WeWork intends to defend itself against this claim”, the company said in a statement. “We have zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind.”
Medina’s complaint, filed on behalf of a proposed class of other female employees, also names Jennifer Berrent, who was WeWork’s chief legal officer, saying she referred to Bardhi’s first pregnancy as a “problem” that needed to be “fixed”.
Neumann referred to Bardhi’s upcoming maternity leave as a “vacation”, the complaint said. Bardhi said that when she returned from maternity leave, she was not given her old job back for several months.
The pattern repeated itself when she became pregnant in 2018, had a child and took maternity leave, according to Bardhi’s complaint. She was fired on 2 October about a week after Neumann stepped down as WeWork’s chief executive.
However, WeWork is already facing other complaints of discrimination, including a lawsuit by a former senior vice president, Lisa Bridges, who says the company tried to force her out when she presented evidence that it compensated men better than women.
Neumann agreed to resign as CEO and give up majority voting control of the company in September after SoftBank Group Corp and other shareholders turned on him over a plunge in the company’s estimated valuation ahead of a planned initial public offering.