Woman wins £23,000 from employers after being sacked over long hours complaint

Former employee says she was awarded for high performance months earlier

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A mortgage advisor sacked after emailing her boss about long hours has won a £23,000 payout after taking her former employers to a work tribunal.

Helen McMahon, who had previously been rewarded by bosses for her high performance, was told to leave Hertfordshire-based Heron Financial Ltd in June 2019.

In May of that year, she emailed her bosses "stressed" to say how hard she worked and how long her hours were, a Cambridge employment tribunal heard, Mail Online reported.

She contacted bosses about unpaid commission, which she felt was no reflected in her most recent payslips.

Ms McMahon worked for the company for some two years from June 2017 as a new build and mortgage protection advisor.

The hearing heard how Ms McMahon would often work 12 hours per day, without a lunch break, and was entitled to performance-based commission pay to top up her £27,000 salary.

After sending the email, Ms McMahon went off sick for two weeks.

When she returned to work on 30 May she was summoned to a meeting with her boss, Robin Thomas.

"I said to Mr Thomas that I was working more than 48 hours a week, that it was stressing me out and that I wanted somehow to reduce my hours," Ms McMahon told the tribunal.

She said the workload "made her ill" and she believed that it was her statutory right not to work more than 48 hours per week.

On 4 June Ms McMahon was asked to attend another meeting with the company's founder, Warren Harrocks, who sacked her without any explanation.

She then sued Heron Financial claiming she had been let go because she complained about her work hours rather than her performance, which the company had alleged.

She told the hearing she had been awarded a bottle of champagne in that year because she had "one of the highest conversion rates in the company".

Mr Harrocks told the tribunal he was unaware Ms McMahon had raised the issue of working hours with Mr Thomas.

But judge Sarah King said "this was a small business and the directors discussed matters regularly between them".

A judge ruled Ms McMahon was unfairly sacked and awarded her £23,000 in compensation for unpaid sick pay, owed commission and wrongful dismissal.