A senior IT worker at Marks & Spencer faces the sack this
week for blowing the whistle on the retailer's plans
to cut redundancy pay to 70,000 workers.
M&S internal investigators have traced the employee, who had
sent details of the plan to a newspaper, by analysing e-mail
traffic. The firm suspended the worker, who has been with Marks
& Spencer for 25 years, on 21 August pending a disciplinary
hearing and possible sacking.
A spokesman for the
GMB union, which represented the worker at yesterday's internal
disciplinary hearing, said he could "confirm that the employee
worked in the IT department".
The union expects Marks & Spencer to sack the employee, but
warned that the retailer had prejudged the issue by removing the
worker from the firm's internal e-mail system before the
hearing.
The details of the plan to cut redundancy pay by 25% were
contained in a memo sent to Marks & Spencer's 70,000
workers.
Richard Baty, a partner in the employment department at law firm
Travers Smith said it
was common practice for employers to suspend employees on full pay
and to remove access such as e-mail in advance of a disciplinary
hearing.
Baty said if the employee had leaked the information after all
the other staff knew the details, sacking the person would seem
"awfully harsh". He said regardless of the legal issues, M&S
would be "mindful of potential adverse publicity" relating to the
case.
The GMB said the case raised the interesting question of who
owns the terms and conditions of employment. He said the union
would take the case to the Employment Tribunal if Marks &
Spencer sacked the worker.
An Marks & Spencer spokesman declined to comment, saying the
matter was internal.
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