Airport security supervisor wins £45k for unfair dismissal over sickness absences

A former airport security employee has been awarded over £45,000 after the employment tribunal found that she had been unfairly dismissed over sickness absences.

The employee (AB) had worked for the airport for over 7 years but was dismissed in 2024 due to a recorded 55 days of sickness absence over 21-months, with absences including a shoulder injury, shoulder pain, COVID-19 and a flu-like sickness.

Following a meeting, AB was dismissed after progressing through the company's absence management policy process. In the meeting, she stated that she was experiencing symptoms of anxiety and mental health issues, for which she was attending GP-arranged counselling and said she believed arthritis could be contributing to her joint pain.

The tribunal determined that her employer had dismissed her because of her absence record and the manager, who conducted the review, believed the company's attendance policy left him with no alternative.

AB joined the airport in 2017 and was transferred to the security services provider two years later. Her job as a security supervisor involved overseeing the security staff, carrying out passenger searches and supervising airport security operations. 

Across 21 months, she had a recorded 55 days of sickness absence, including 34 days off after rotator cuff surgery, two different periods of having COVID-19, an eye infection, stomach illnesses and 10 days off for shoulder pain, which the tribunal found were all genuine.

The company used its attendance management policy process, using ‘trigger points’ as thresholds for the number and frequency of absences that were acceptable and unacceptable, so it could determine when employees progress to formal reviews.

When AB had reached the final stage, after her most recent absence, she was referred to Occupational Health (OH), where OH recommended she take on lighter duties and a phased return to work. The company implemented both of these recommendations.

Subsequently, she was invited to a meeting, chaired by the station manager, who would decide if her employment would end or continue.

During the meeting, AB stated that she was experiencing anxiety and mental health issues, for which she was receiving GP-allocated counselling. As well as this, she brought up the possibility that her having reactive arthritis could be causing her joint pain and absences were due to this, which she was later diagnosed with.

However, the manager determined that AB’s OH report found she had no underlying issues and therefore dismissed her. The tribunal found that there was a misunderstanding regarding the OH report, as it only said that AB was unlikely to meet the legal definition of disability.

Further to this, AB appealed the decision, which was heard by the divisional director, arguing that she had not received meaningful support and though her health concerns were still being investigated, no alternatives to dismissal had been explored. At this point, AB had received a formal diagnosis of reactive arthritis, but her appeal was rejected.

The judge concluded that AB’s employer had failed to investigate whether she had an underlying medical condition, even though they were told that reactive arthritis could be contributing to her absence record.

The judge stated that “The [station manager] could have referred the claimant back to occupational health on this specific point, for example, but he did not. He could have asked the claimant to provide information from her GP, for example, but again he did not.”

The company was also criticised for its failure to consider alternative options to dismissal or to assess how much disruption AB’s absences caused to the business.

The judge additionally criticised the appeal process, calling it “shambolic”, finding that the director did not investigate the key issues AB had raised, such as the possibility of reactive arthritis, alternatives to dismissal and the original manager’s lack of impartiality. The judge went on to state, “In reality, [the director] paid no more than lip service to the fact that an appeal had been raised.”

As a result, AB was awarded a basic award of £7,350 and a compensatory award of £37,779. The tribunal also rejected the employers’ claims that compensation should be reduced due to her conduct or because she would have been dismissed even if they had followed a fair process.

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