A former Wetherspoons worker sacked for accidentally emailing complaints about his boss to 180 pubs has been awarded £12,000 for his unfair dismissal.
Thomas Batsford’s job as a kitchen shift leader at the Swan and Angel in St Ives, Camrbidgeshire, was already on the line before he sent an email intended for the regional manager.
He was due to face a disciplinary hearing for falsely calling in sick and failing to do tasks he had marked as complete on the sign-off system.
This was simply how previous boss Michael Loveridge had trained him, he insisted, and he ‘couldn’t face coming into work’ because he had left in tears the day, feeling he was being ‘bullied’ by his replacement.
New pub manager Theresa Temperley had taken ‘something of a new broom approach’ when she arrived in December 2022.
Mr Batsford, who had been there since 2018 felt he was on a ‘hit list’ of employees Ms Temperley wanted to get rid of, despite him correcting the way he worked after being ‘admonished’ for it.
Called into a meeting to discuss his alleged infractions in May 2023, Batsford explained his concerns about his treatment.
But she suspended him and scheduled a disciplinary hearing for May 9. Others who had similarly ‘falsified documents’ did not face the same treatment.
In response, Batsford sent a five-page email with ‘serious allegations’ about Temperley and another colleague, Jess Lent, to the regional manager Jedd Murphy – at least, that’s who he thought he was emailing.
After Ms Temperley refused to provide Mr Murphy’s email address, Batsford tried to find it himself.
What he found was an email containing Mr Murphy’s name, so he sent to it a grievance detailing Temperley and Lent’s behaviour at work and what he described as ‘highly unprofessional’ messages both had sent on WhatsApp.
He only realised after sending it that the address was actually for the entire pub region, not just Mr Murphy personally.
Batsford then ‘sent a following email asking for the original email to be deleted’, the tribunal judge’s conclusion says.
‘Sadly, the email had, by that time, been disseminated to some 180 pubs.’
Despite Batsford’s grievance raising complaints relevant to the disciplinary process, Ms Temperley didn’t suspend.
Instead, she launched a second investigation into Batsford and included a data breach in the allegations. Ultimately, he was sacked without notice.
But an employment tribunal sided with Batsford over Wetherspoons.
Although the tribunal concluded the allegations against Batsford were reasonable grounds for firing him, his dismissal was still unfair.
Ms Temperley, who answered the tribunal ‘in a clipped tone’, had an animus against him and treated him poorly compared to others’, the judge said.
Batsford had faced a disciplinary process not launched against other employees who had also followed the processes incorrectly.
During the disciplinary hearing there was also no attempt to look into the concerns Batsford had raised about his treatment.
The judge said: ‘[Wetherspoons] failed to investigate issues properly which fed directly into the issues which were the subject of the disciplinary process.
‘The issues raised in the grievance were very pertinent as were issues raised by [Mr Batsford] at the investigation meetings and at the disciplinary hearing itself.
‘These merited further investigation as part of the disciplinary hearing but they were ignored.
‘The grievance was treated separately despite being highly relevant.’
The mass email, meanwhile, the tribunal deemed was a ‘mistake that any
employee might have reasonably made’.
As a result, the tribunal awarded £12,502.16.
Mr Batsford also made claims of age discrimination and sex discrimination, which the tribunal dismissed.
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