M&S accused of 'corporate bullying'
Thursday, 04 Sep 2008 09:05
Myleene Klass, one of M&S' top models
Marks and Spencer have been accused of "corporate bullying" after dismissing a worker who leaked information about a cut in redundancy payments to the press.
The GMB union have seized on the decision as evidence of M&S' "repressive regime", calling the dismissal "a gross act of corporate bullying".
The worker blew the whistle on company plans to cut redundancy pay for the firm's 70,000 staff when he was based at M&S' head office in London. After passing on the plans to reduce payments by up to 25 per cent to the media, the worker was immediately suspended until this week's disciplinary hearing.
"The disappointing part of today's decision is that M&S head of global HR John Wareham stated that the 25 year long service of this employee is totally irrelevant to the decision to sack him," commented Maria Ludkin, GMB legal officer.
"M&S have shown that they are more concerned about maintaining a repressive regime for their staff than about promoting open discussion about the direction of the company and the way that the staff are treated.
"Make no mistake, this is a gross act of corporate bullying."
But an M&S spokesperson told
politics.co.uk the worker made derogatory and speculative comments to the media.
"We never take a decision like this lightly," they said.
"We couldn’t be confident that the individual would not disclose internal company information in this way in the future."