Blue Islands acted unfairly in dismissal of flight attendant
A FLIGHT attendant was unfairly dismissed by Blue Islands after a pre-existing condition she suffered from worsened after she gave birth, a tribunal has found.
Jersey’s Employment and Discrimination Tribunal ordered the airline to pay Andrea Elcock £7,821.45 in compensation after it found that it had ‘dismissed the claimant for a reason connected with the fact that she had given birth’.
According to the judgment, Ms Elcock had been a member of the cabin crew with Blue Islands from 7 January 2013 until 26 October 2017.
She began maternity leave on 14 December 2016 and it was agreed that she would return to work on 1 June 2017.
However, the judgment says that a pre-existing condition that Ms Elcock suffers from, called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, worsened during pregnancy and while breastfeeding. EDS affects the ligaments in the body.
The judgment states: ‘The claimant gave evidence that in her case, her pelvis started to split apart, her hip popped out and her coccyx was extremely painful as her ligaments were “pushed to the limit”.’
Ms Elcock told the tribunal that, prior to her pregnancy, she had never been absent from work due to her EDS.
On 29 May 2017, Ms Elcock told Blue Islands that she had been signed off by the doctor until 26 June due to a cold and back problems.
On 25 June, she was signed off again until 24 July.
She was then signed off for a further eight weeks until 18 September.
On 24 July, Blue Islands wrote to Ms Elcock requesting that she attend a long-term sickness absence review meeting during which she said that her EDS had been aggravated by the fact she was breastfeeding and that it would improve when she gave up.
A second long-term sickness absence review meeting was held on 31 August during which Ms Elcock was told that a decision had been made to terminate her employment and that she was being given eight weeks’ notice.
The reasons cited were because of the GP’s inability to provide a specific timeframe for her return to work, the length of her current absence, the impact on Blue Islands’ business and the viability of her being able to continue in a flight role.
However, Hilary Griffin, chairwoman of the tribunal, found that Ms Elcock’s dismissal was ‘automatically unfair’.
