A woman in the UK has been granted compensation of as much as 11,885.62 Pounds or Rs. 12 lakhs after she sued her company for unfair dismissal.
Tracey Sherwood was working at Lean Education and Development’ in Dudley, West Midlands, UK and she was fired for a reason as unreasonable as “going out for lunch!”
UK Woman Fired For Going Out For Lunch!
As per reports, while the company faced a crisis, she left the office to have lunch with two of her coworkers. Because the company was going through a difficult time, Maxine Jones, the managing director of Shearwood, was irritated by this and felt she was not taking her job seriously.
Shearwood was let go by the apprenticeship training company where she oversaw compliance due to “gross misconduct.”
Prior to the incident, she had just been reinstated after being suspended due to irregularities in an audit. Her boss reportedly didn’t like her going out for lunch because it came so soon after the suspension had been lifted.
Sherwood Granted Compensation of £11,885 By Tribunal Judge
Shearwood was fired after yet another disciplinary hearing in September 2018, with the reason given being “pure negligence” and mistakes in her paperwork.
According to the Employment Tribunals, the managing director, Maxine Jones, allegedly saw the lunch as “disloyalty” and proof that she wasn’t “dedicated” to her job at Lean Education and Development in Dudley, West Midlands. Due to this “gross misconduct,” Ms. Shearwood was let go by the company.
Sherwood then filed a lawsuit against her former employers, and the tribunal court, under the jurisdiction of Employment Judge J. Jones determined that her dismissal was unlawful and granted her a compensation award of £11,885.
US Based Companies Fire Employees
As we reported earlier, US-based tech firms have fired more than 45,000 staff as of October 2022.
Meta had announced its intention to cut approximately 11,000 jobs which represent 13% of its global headcount. Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, cut 3,700 of the company’s staff, about 50% of the company’s workforce, and 90% in its India office.
Additionally, Microsoft laid off about 1,000 staff across multiple divisions this July in order to ‘set the right business priorities and make structural adjustments’.
