A British woman took her employer to Court for not giving her a goodbye card when she was laid off. Karen Conaghan, a former worker of International Airlines Group (IAG), alleged that the company failed to recognise her existence therefore a violation of the equality law. The tribunal rejected all her accusations, arguing the problem was not in discrimination but in relations at the workplace.
The Guardian reported that Conaghan, a business liaison lead at IAG, stated the “failure to acknowledge her existence” was equivalent to a form of victimisation in the Equality Act. Conaghan contended that this exclusion formed part of a broader discrimination that she experienced at work, which included unjust termination and sexual harassment.
She started working for the company in 2019 and was let go during mass layoffs with many others due to some reorganisations.
However, according to the evidence presented to an employment tribunal, a former colleague said, managers had indeed bought a card but did not give it to Conaghan because there were not enough signatures, The Times reported.
The judge, Kevin Palmer, was quoted by The Guardian stating: “He believed it would have been more insulting to give her the card than not to give her a card at all.”
According to the reports, the management also revealed that two men let go of the company during the so-called restructuring process also never received leaving cards.
Conaghan lodged 40 complaints of sexual harassment, victimisation and unfair dismissal with the company, the report said. However, the tribunal rejected all the claims, and Palmer said that Conaghan had developed a “conspiracy-theory mentality”, which led her to consider ordinary work communication as harassment.
The report also said that Conaghan relocated to Richmond, North Yorkshire in September 2021 but according to the company policy, all employees are required to live within a two-hour drive from the Heathrow office. She was let go of her job the same year due to the restructuring of the organisation along with many other colleagues.
Palmer was quoted by the news outlet stating that more signatures were added to the leaving card after Conaghan left, however, a former work partner opined that it was not right to send the card to her since she had complained to the company management about sexual harassment by him and another worker.
As to many of the acts listed in the claim, the judge stated that either such actions never occurred or, if indeed they took place, they were entirely benign workplace conversations.
The judge reportedly said that there was nothing in the record that would lead one to conclude that any of Conaghan’s allegations are in any way gendered or sexually motivated and that one of the allegations can be seen as illustrating a “view of normal interactions being something more sinister”.
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