A Royal Mail employee who had virtually £4,000 of sick pay illegally docked by a supervisor she accused of bullying has gained the money again after taking her bosses to a tribunal.
Pamela Grey was signed off work with anxiousness and stress after studying that her new boss at Bo'ness Supply Workplace was to be a colleague she had beforehand accused of bullying.
She instructed her outgoing supervisor on March 29 that she could not work with them and handed in a long-term sick be aware from her physician.
Pamela mentioned in a letter to her boss: "You and everybody else are nicely conscious that I'm off work due to earlier points with your self.
"Make no mistake, I wish to be working however at the moment. I hope my sick line from physician’s will do."
Nonetheless, her new supervisor demanded that she meet with him or face having her pay docked.
When each she and a commerce union rep failed to indicate, he mentioned in a letter dated April twelfth: "I need to advise you that from 13 04 2021 you'll now not be entitled to obtain Royal Mail sick pay."
An Employment Tribunal has now concluded that the Royal Mail illegally deducted £3,893.21 of wages from Pamela's wages between April and September 2021 after she concluded she could not face her alleged tormentor.
Employment Choose Joseph d'Inverno mentioned that the deductions had begun with too little discover - in the future - and that a failure by her commerce union rep to seem at conferences on her behalf could not be blamed on her.
He additionally mentioned postal bosses could not use the very fact she was persevering with to work elsewhere within the sorting workplace as a cleaner towards her.
Pamela's supervisor in that job - underneath a separate firm - had rearranged her rota to ensure she by no means got here face-to-face along with her accused bully.
The choose additionally criticised the Royal Mail for failing to offer her the choice of talking to another person contained in the postal large.
It had insisted that every part needed to undergo the supervisor she mentioned she was "bodily and mentally unable" to work alongside regardless of the problems she had raised.
And at one level early within the dispute, one other Royal Mail boss mentioned to Pamela of her allegations: "It did not occur, it did not occur."
Choose d'Inverno mentioned: "The choice [to stop sick pay] and the explanations notified...have been predicated upon a variety of factual inaccuracies.
"The Tribunal decided that the claimant’s [Pamela's] entitlement to sick pay continued...and that in withholding the claimant’s sick pay in that interval the respondent [RM] did make an unauthorised deduction from her wages."
Pamela, who secured the victory towards her employers with out authorized illustration, instructed a Report reporter she was unable to remark.
She remains to be employed on the sorting workplace on East Pier Road in Bo'ness, between Grangemouth and South Queensferry.
The Royal Mail was contacted for remark.
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