500 signatures reached
To: Nick Lodge, Director of Benefits & Credits, HMRC
Reinstate Iain Yell
Unfortunately we lost: Iain's case went to Employment Tribunal, where it unfortunately failed
We the undersigned call on Nick Lodge, as director of Benefits & Credits, to reinstate Iain Yell and to end the discriminatory application of attendance management policy by B&C managers against disabled members of staff.
Why is this important?
Iain Yell worked for HMRC in the Triad in Bootle, where he was part of the Benefits & Credits section. He was dismissed at the end of June through the department’s attendance management policy.
Iain suffers from depression, and all of his absences were related to this condition. Hardly at record levels, they were in fact tapering off because of his own efforts to better manage his condition. In spite of this a single period of absence, provoked by the side effects of a reduction in medication which he had agreed with his doctor, was used as justification that his absences were ‘unsustainable’ and that he had to go.
Iain’s rep had argued that a much greater portion of his absences, if not all of them, should disregarded by the poor attendance hearing since they were disability related. Management refused to even disregard a full quarter of Iain’s absences, despite every one of them being as a result of his disability and his Occupational Health referral stating that he was likely to be covered by the terms of the Equality Act 2010.
In PCS’s view, the refusal to disregard all of Iain’s disability related sickness absence for managing attendance purposes amounts to discrimination arising from disability and the dismissal decision must be reversed.
