£40K FOR BA MUM
AIRLINE REFUSED TO LET MANAGER WORK PART-TIME OVER ‘MORALE’ FEARS
A FORMER British Airways stewardess has been awarded almost £40,000 for sex discrimination after the airline refused to let her go part-time when she had a baby.
In-flight business manager Chloe Daly, who worked for BA for nearly ten years, was told it would be bad for morale if she reduced her hours by 25 per cent and worked on set days.
The senior employee took maternity leave in July 2017 after her daughter was born six weeks early with serious health problems.
And ahead of her return in August 2018 she found she would be unable to arrange affordable childcare if she stuck to BA’s full-time flexible shift pattern.
She applied for part-time hours that would meet her needs and suggested a six-month trial of her proposals.
But the company said: ‘There may be a negative impact on morale within the team if they had to manage situations that may arise in your absence in addition to their current workload.’
Ms Daly was part of a team of five IBMs for BA CityFlyer – three men and two women – and none of the others had children, an employment tribunal in east London heard.
She was mainly based at London City airport but required to fly as cabin crew about two days a week.
The manager from Thundersley, Essex, was grounded during her pregnancy and was later permitted to work from home part of the time.
Ms Daly told the hearing that in her managerial role she had turned down flexible working requests from other staff and BA ‘was overall very resistant to granting flexibility’. In May 2018 she resigned after becoming pregnant with her second child.
She told bosses: ‘Due to my flexible working request and appeal application being denied, it would make it extremely hard for me to return to my current role full-time. I feel I have been given no option but to resign from my loved role.’
Finding BA guilty of indirect sex discrimination, the tribunal said it had no evidence her request would affect morale and the airline was ‘resistant’ to flexible working for childcare.