Agnes Wilkie was a television producer with
Scottish Television (STV), the Scottish ITV franchise. She was
suspended then sacked from her £70,000 a year job as head of
features when emails were discovered referring to her boss Bobby
Hain as 'a big fat thing' and 'blob'.
Hain discovered mails which had been sent to
his personal assistant and was said at the Tribunal to have been
"mortified". Wilkie was accused of having behaved in a way that was
"tantamount to bullying", but said that nicknames "came with the
territory".
Hain was said to have had the name Mr Bobby
when he worked as a disc jockey, and that the nickname Mr Blobby,
after the lurid pink and yellow toy that was for years Noel
Edmond's on-air colleague, developed from that.
The Tribunal said that blame for the situation
was to be shared. Wilkie was 75% responsible for the situation
because her behaviour was calculated to undermine Hain and her
conduct was serious.
It found, though, that the dismissal of Wilkie
was unfair because she had offered to apologise, but that offer was
rejected.
Following the discovery of the initial email,
Wilkie was suspended in November 2005. Hain had found the email
when he was searching through his PA's mails, with permission, when
she was off sick.
On finding out that the mail had been
discovered, Wilkie wrote to the PA to say: " Poor Bobby. Let me go
and apologise and explain the context". Instead, the company made
further investigations and found other emails.
Because of Wilkie's role in the situation, her
compensation was reduced to 12.5% of her loss, the Tribunal
said.
"I shouldn't have sent the email like that
because it caused hurt," said Wilkie. "I referred to a member of
the company in the same terms as most people in the company happily
referred to him. Most people in my industry would say: 'I've
written worse than that'."
"We welcome the panel's decision that Ms
Wilkie's behaviour was calculated to undermine Bobby Hain,
constituting a fundamental breach of contract," said an STV
statement. "We believe strongly that all our people have the right
to be treated with courtesy."
"We argued from the start that the process was
flawed," said Paul Holleran, the Scottish organiser for the
National Union of Journalists. "There is a lesson here for
employers to take a reasonable approach and not to overreact. It is
also a lesson to all workers to take care when using e-mails."
