An analyst was sacked by a financial services company after he was absent because of an allergic reaction to peanuts – an act an employment tribunal has said was discriminatory.
The London Central employment tribunal heard that secure international payment service Monsas dismissed Mr Ajanaku for failing to attend work and communicate his whereabouts, when in fact he had informed the company about why he was absent on his first day away from work.
It also accused him of gross misconduct for failing to produce a medical certificate. The tribunal said this could not be considered an act of misconduct.
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Ajanaku had worked for the company for around nine months before his absence. During this time no formal concerns about his performance were raised, although the tribunal heard that he ”never answered his phone or emails” and that his output was low.
He attended his brother’s wedding in April 2022. Among the food served was a Nigerian dish, suya, which is seasoned with peanuts. After consuming the food he went into anaphylactic shock and was hospitalised. Although he was discharged the following day, a Sunday, he was told to rest and given a five-day course of medication.
Although the company’s sickness absence policy states that employees must inform the company by 9:30am on the first day of absence, Ajanaku did not send a message about his situation until nearly 2pm. He claimed this was because he was on a lot of medication at the time.
When he returned to work the following week, after five working days of absence, his manager asked to see evidence of the work he had completed in the weeks either side of his absence and a medical certificate.
Ajanaku was under the impression he did not need to present a certificate because he had only been off for five working days. The company’s policy stated that a certificate must be produced after seven calendar days, however the tribunal found that he had never been alerted to the staff handbook that detailed this requirement.
A disciplinary meeting took place to discuss performance concerns and to give him a further opportunity to provide a medical certificate. He was not informed that dismissal would be a possible outcome of the meeting, and he felt he was not given sufficient notice to prepare.
He claimed that being invited to the meeting and being asked to provide a medical certificate at short notice was an act of disability-related harassment. However, the London Central employment tribunal found that the invitation to the meeting and the request for the medical certificate “was not with the purpose of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading,
humiliating or offensive environment for the claimant. It was for the managerial reasons that they gave”.
Ajanaku was dismissed from the company without notice in May 2022, claiming that he had failed to attend work and had not responded to the company’s enquiries. No right of appeal was given in the dismissal letter.
The organisation told the tribunal that his failure to provide a medical certificate would not have been a problem if the claimant had not built up a pattern of being “unreliable and shirking work”. It saw his failure to produce the certificate as the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.
The tribunal’s judgment said it was not disproportionate for the company to ask for a medical certificate if it had doubts about the legitimacy of his absence, but found he had been treated unfavourably when he was invited to attend the disciplinary hearing at short notice.
It dismissed Ajanaku’s claims for direct disability discrimination, indirect disability discrimination, failure to provide reasonable adjustments, disability-related harassment and victimisation, but his claims for breach of notice pay and discrimination arising from disability succeeded.
A further hearing will be set to discuss compensation.
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