An HR manager, who claims that her former employer overworked her to such an extent that she became ill, has sued the company for £800,000 in compensation.
According to the Metro newspaper, Joanna MacLennan told the High Court that she worked “impossible hours”, which included 12-hour days, while undertaking recruitment activity for insurance firm, Hartford Europe.
After joining the company in November 2004, she attested that she lived on vitamin supplements and cold medicines in order to get through the working day. MacLennan was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in 2006 and has not worked for five years.
Her barrister, David Melville QC, alleged that her former employer had ignored her health issues which, he said, should be set against a “background of excessive hours, which she had been required to work”.
The court heard that MacLennan took time off sick on numerous occasions in the year following her appointment, but the work just continued piling up. While she said that she enjoyed being stretched, she added that there were limits.
“If I had been waiting for work to come in, then that would not have been good. There’s a difference between stretched and being stressed, certainly,” MacLennan said.
But Hartford Europe’s barrister David Platt QC claimed that she was remembering events through a “dark telescope” and that from emails to friends at the time, she appeared to have enjoyed work.
He also alleged that she only took time off sick on one occasion – when she was passed over for promotion in 2005.
MacLennan retorted: “I wouldn’t want to be promoted. That never, ever crossed my mind. I just wanted to be able to do my job.”
The case continues.
