Former NatWest employee demands about 5 million for dismissal
2022.11.28 11:52
Former NatWest employee demands about 5 million for dismissal
Budrigannews.com – After a London judge ruled that she was discriminated against and unfairly dismissed days after cancer surgery, a senior banker is suing NatWest for approximately 4.3 million pounds ($5.2 million).
Adeline Willis, who had worked at NatWest for more than six years, was partially successful in her case in February. A judge said that NatWest was “tainted with discrimination” when it fired her from her 160,000 pound a year job in 2020, eight months after she was diagnosed with bowel cancer.
The UK Equality Act of 2010 lists cancer as a disability, preventing discrimination against cancer patients.
Monday at the Central London Employment Tribunal, lawyers for NatWest and the 44-year-old risk and compliance officer clashed over document disclosures regarding her income since leaving the bank.
A court-filed document revealed that Willis has increased her claim in response to NatWest’s “high handed manner” in its response to the most recent proceedings.The majority of employment claims are settled out of court, so this case is unusual.
Willis’s attorney, Paul Gilroy, told a two-day hearing that NatWest wanted to call four witnesses to “attack” Willis’s evidence, including challenging the impact of learning that she had been fired by text while she was in the hospital.
“We have effectively arrived here under false pretenses.””There’s no way this case can be resolved in two days,” Gilroy stated.
A NatWest lawyer named Charles Crow acknowledged that Willis’s team could have been informed earlier of the number of experts the bank was calling.However, he asserted, both parties ought to have realized that a hearing lasting two days would not be sufficient to resolve disagreements.
A NatWest spokesperson stated, “We recognize the extremely difficult personal circumstances in this case and that there were things the bank did not get right.”
“NatWest stays focused on building a comprehensive culture and guaranteeing this can’t reoccur.”
