Sacked over a sarnie
Cleaner at City law firm fired for eating £1.50 office left-overs
A CLEANER sacked for eating a leftover tuna sandwich was told her actions ‘ irrevocably destroyed the trust and confidence’ needed for her job.
Single mother Gabriela Rodriguez was fired after she picked up the £1.50 Tesco sandwich left out on a discarded platter for workers at a City law firm.
Ms Rodriguez, 39, from Ecuador, has launched an unfair dismissal claim against Total Clean, which was contracted to corporate law firm Devonshires. In a letter to Ms Rodriguez, seen by the Daily Mail, boss Graham Peterson said her action was a ‘fundamental breach’ of her contract.
Following a disciplinary hearing on November 23, he told her: ‘At the hearing your explanation was that you found a sandwich in the kitchen near the end of your shift and took it without giving it a
‘Routinely dismissed on trivial grounds’
second thought. You stated that previously the client had left food in the kitchen and offered it out, so you thought it was fine.
‘I considered your explanation to be unsatisfactory because you confirmed that no one had offered you the food in the kitchen but decided to take it anyway.
‘I have decided that your conduct has resulted in a fundamental breach of your contractual terms which irrevocably destroys the trust and confidence necessary to continue the employment relationship.’
He said he had weighed up whether a lesser sanction than sacking might be ‘appropriate’, but decided against it. He concluded: ‘ You are therefore dismissed with immediate effect from Total Clean. You are not entitled to notice or pay in lieu of notice.’
Ms Rodriguez, who lives in north London, does not speak English and relied on her £13-hour job to support her daughter, ten.
An appeal letter sent by the UVW Union – which describes itself as a ‘grassroots trade union for low-paid, migrant and precarious workers’ – said her sacking was ‘far beyond the realms of reasonableness and comprehension’.
The letter added: ‘ There were various full trays of leftover sandwiches that had been laid out for staff to eat. Gabriela understood she was also allowed to eat this food. We now understand that the privilege of eating leftover sandwiches perhaps does not extend to the outsourced migrant workforce in the building.’
Campaigners protested over Ms Rodriguez’s sacking, marching outside Devonshires’ offices armed with 100 cans of tuna and 300 sandwiches.
Supporters said she had worked for the company for two years with an ‘impeccable record’.
UVW general secretary Petros Elia said: ‘Cleaners are routinely dismissed on trivial and, we argue, discriminatory, grounds like this every day. Many describe feeling treated like the dirt they clean, and Gabriela is one of them.’
The UVW is now helping Ms Rodriguez take legal action, alleging unfair dismissal and discrimination. Total Clean, which last year posted profits of £1.6million, accused the UVW and Ms Rodriguez of ‘misleading and inaccurate information’. A spokesman added: ‘All steps taken have been in accordance with employment law following the proper investigative and disciplinary process.’
Ms Rodriguez told the Mail last night: ‘I’m still so angry about the way I’ve been treated. I’ve been accused of theft when all I did was eat a small sandwich that was probably going to end up in the bin. The way they got rid of me was horrible... There were a lot of tears and days when I had no appetite. That and the worry of not knowing how I’d cope financially because I’m a single mum bringing up a young daughter on just the one salary.’
A spokesman for Devonshires said it not did not make a formal complaint against Ms Rodriguez and expressly told Total Clean not to take action against her.
He added: ‘We have made clear to Total Clean that we would not object, as we never have done, to Gabriela working on our premises if Total Clean changes its position.’
Every once in a while along comes a story which sums up modern Britain in microcosm. Step forward Gabriela rodriguez, an office cleaner sacked for ‘stealing’ a leftover tuna sandwich.
Ms rodriguez is a 39-year-old single mother of two from ecuador, who has been employed by a cleaning contractor in the City of London for the past two years.
She is now suing for unfair dismissal after being fired from her £13-an-hour job following a complaint that she had ‘ taken client property . . . without authority or reasonable excuse’.
The details of the alleged theft of this discarded £ 1.50 Tesco sarnie need not detain us, although some versions claim that the filling was egg, not tuna.
What nobody has bothered to ask is: why are we importing office cleaners from ecuador when nine million of our own people are sitting at home doing stuff- all, many claiming sickness benefits?
Ms rodriguez’s case has become something of a cause celebre, taken up by the United voices of the World (UvW), a trade union established specifically to fight for the rights of foreign workers in Britain.
Speaking as someone who covered the labour movement for more than a decade, i’d never previously heard of the United voices of the World.
But given that there are now 6.2 million workers from overseas employed here, i shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the UvW is the biggest union in the country, outstripping the once mighty TGWU, or whatever it calls itself this week.
Foreign nationals now comprise around one- fifth of the workforce, more than half the number of British citizens aged between 16 and 64 classed as ‘economically inactive’.
For the record, i’ve never had a problem with anyone who comes to Britain for a better life, provided they work hard and pay their taxes. Ms rodriguez is just one of the six-million-plus immigrants filling largely menial jobs which British ‘ workers’ consider beneath them.
it wasn’t always thus. in the days when i covered the unions for London’s evening Standard, the only people schlepping into town at the crack of dawn were evening paper hacks and assorted janitorial workers servicing offices in the City.
When i commuted to Fleet Street from essex, the train would start filling up at Stratford as it rattled through the east end. Most of the passengers being decanted at Liverpool Street were cleaners and maintenance staff employed in the Square Mile.
This Happy Breed were celebrated in an iTv drama series called Mrs Thursday, played by kathleen Harrison, a Cockney charlady who inherits a fortune from her grateful boss. Later, when
i moved to north London, i would cadge a lift with my neighbour Bongo pete, a part- time percussionist who considered Special Brew an acceptable breakfast beverage.
pete’s legendary thirst cost him his chosen profession as an insurance broker. But after he was made redundant in his late 40s, and rather than sit at home drinking himself into oblivion, he spotted a gap in the market and started a company sterilising telephones in the City.
He soon had a successful business, but to the best of my knowledge most of his staff were local.
none of them came from ecuador, some 6,000 miles away as the crow flies.
These days, pete could easily have retired early and been shunted on to incapacity benefits until it was time to take his old age pension. His Special Brew dependency could be written off as a ‘disability’, no questions asked.
How did we end up with four out of ten working age people claiming benefits?
There are more than a million vacancies waiting to be filled at any one time. We shouldn’t have to import 1.2 million immigrants a year to make up the shortfall.
That’s the real headline, not the ‘net’ migration figure — which subtracts the number of British citizens and other temporary residents Getting Out of Dodge for good.
WE’VE also managed to breed a generation of workshy millennial snowflakes, too frightened to leave the security of their bedrooms. around 200,000 18-to-24-year-olds claim to be too ill to work because of ‘mental health ishoos’.
The Covid lockdown and rishi Sunak’s Money For nothing and your Chips For Free furlough largesse institutionalised idleness. it was no surprise to read a report at the weekend claiming that Britain is facing an obesity epidemic because people ‘working from home’ are piling on the pounds, stuffing their faces with Hobnobs and watching Bargain Hunt in their jimjams.
Half the country now considers work an optional extra. even those prepared to take a job believe it is their right to ‘ WFH’ for at least part of the week.
no wonder productivity has plummeted. The City of London, like city centres across the country, is a virtual ghost town on Mondays and Fridays.
Gabriela rodriguez was probably one of the few people who bothered setting foot in that office on the day in question.
Without Gabriela, and millions of others like her, the economy would collapse. The least we can do is give her a sandwich.
Fleets of driverless vehicles could soon be used to deliver aid to war zones such as Ukraine. Given the gremlins which
have crept in to tests of self-driving cars in the U.s., ploughing down pedestrians included, they’d probably end up invading Poland.