In the case of Mrs A O’Mahony v Priory Healthcare Limited a therapist at the Priory who was forced out of her job after insisting on working from home during the Covid pandemic has won a £40,000 pay out.
Alison O’Mahony said she was protecting the safety of herself, colleagues, and patients when she refused to travel into the mental health facility in Bromley from March to August 2020.
The government had imposed the first Covid lockdown, but the therapist found herself at loggerheads with bosses who insisted she could only lead treatment sessions in-person.
Ms O’Mahony won an employment tribunal brought against Priory Healthcare Limited when a judge concluded she had been unfairly docked wages and then constructively dismissed.
Judge Katherine Andrews concluded Priory bosses had been “inflexible” in the early stages of the pandemic, adopting a “dogmatic application of policy” and failing to properly consider if Ms O’Mahony could successfully work from home.
She said that while the clinic was entitled to organise its own working practices, the grievance process that Ms O’Mahony went through had “many flaws”.
And she ruled that Ms O’Mahony had a “reasonable belief in circumstances of danger” when she refused to attend work between March and August.
A Priory spokesperson said: “As a learning organisation we have reviewed the decision carefully. We do, of course, respect the decision and will comply with the findings.”
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