IF seven-months-pregnant East Lancashire supermarket worker Kimberley Fielding feels aggrieved today over being abruptly sacked from her job, she can draw comfort from the fact that thousands will share her upset.

According to her employer, she was guilty of gross misconduct. As a result, she is out of work, unable to draw maternity pay, unable -- in her condition -- to seek another job, and afraid that her future employment hopes have been ruined by the stain on her record.

But what was the 'crime' that pitched 20-year-old Kimberley into this plight?

It was that she gave away 100 carrier bags for nothing while working on the check-out at the Netto store in Darwen.

The fifty 9p bags she let customers have for free along with a similar number of 3p bags left multi-million-pound Netto chain £6 out of pocket.

Found to have done this over a period of less than eight hours by Netto staff monitoring closed-circuit TV pictures, the young mother-to-be was suspended and then given the sack days later. This was despite her having had no previous warnings or problems during her four years at the store.

She agrees she knew she was supposed to charge for the bags. But working on a busy till-- a role that was somewhat new to her -- she forgot to key in the cost of the 100 bags in question and insists it was not a deliberate deed.

Whether or not it was, the issue, surely, is whether the loss of £6-worth of carrier bags merits an employee with an unblemished record and in the later stages of pregnancy being almost summarily sacked, pitched into poverty and having her future job prospects blighted.

It may be that, as Netto Food UK's managing director Thomas Jellum says today, giving away carrier bags costs the company £50,000 a year, but still does that make what happened to Kimberley fair?

Perhaps that is something an employment tribunal may -- and ought to -- decide.

But if a commonsense judgment of Netto's response was asked for from ordinary folk, we are sure they would say it was extreme and harsh.