Hi Mark,
Take a look at this:
Former Royal Mail worker wins unfair dismissal claim over sick son
A woman who was sacked for taking time off to care for her asthmatic son has been awarded £8700 at an employment tribunal.
The judge ruled that Alison Balch, who took time off seven times during her 6 month trial period at Royal Mail, had been unfairly dismissed as she received no formal warning about her attendance before she was fired.
The tribunal heard that, as a new employee, Balch should have been given a performance review after 3 months.
Although her line manager had written up a performance review at this stage which raised concerns about her attendance, she did not see this until she met him for her 6 month assessment.
Shortly after this meeting she was dismissed and given one weeks notice, despite explaining that her five year old son suffered from health problems.
Stephen Simpson, employment lawyer at XpertHR commented: “it is automatically unfair to dismiss someone for asserting the statutory right to a reasonable amount of unpaid time off to deal with emergency situations involving a dependant
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This is the type of case where an individual might bring a discrimination claim for an association with a disabled person (in this case the employees own child), especially now that the Equality Act 2010 explicitly allows for this”
The tribunal ruled that both Balch’s contract of employment and Royal Mail’s attendance procedures failed to mention time off for dependants and so failed to adhere to the Employment Rights Act.
Unless the RM have changed their contracts and attendance procedure to include time off for dependants, which I doubt, then this might still be relevant. I'm sure someone will let you know if they have been updated, in the meantime, I'll be watching this thread and help if I can.
I'm sure you will already have submitted a grievance , if not, do. You don't need the grievance form, just write a letter of grievance. RM have 5 days in which to respond to it - they usually don't!.
If you plan to submit a claim to an Employment Tribunal for disability discrimination by association and unfair dismissal, Do it sooner rather than later but you only have 3 months less one day from the date of your dismissal to submit a claim.
Hope this is of some help.
