A British Telecom manager, fired over her part in a call generation scheme to disguise the fact that they were not answering sufficient calls, has been awarded more than £35,000 compensation by an employment tribunal.
Carol Clegg, 38, was dismissed after 22 years' service with BT after it was discovered she was aware of a practice involving calls being deliberately made to improve apparent performance on a contract for the Ministry of Defence. She was not the only manager to be disciplined but a Glasgow employment tribunal found her dismissal was unfair as no action was taken against other BT managers who were also aware of the practice.
But the tribunal found she was largely to blame by her own actions and cut her compensation in half to £35,153.
The tribunal heard BT would face additional costs if it failed to achieve the agreed level of service for the MoD call centre contract, which included emergency calls at call centres in Dumbarton, Kettering, Wakefield and St Helens.
An investigation was launched by BT security officers over allegations about calls being deliberately generated. It emerged that manager Chris Bean had instructed in 2002 that calls were to be generated to achieve service levels by any means necessary, including auto-dialling. Mrs Clegg, her manager and another manager had all been parties involved in the conference call. If anyone inquired about the calls, the answer to be given was that they were test calls.
Mrs Clegg said when she later became responsible for the contract, she issued instructions that call generation was no longer to take place.
But she was suspended in January, 2006, and dismissed in September of that year for gross misconduct. Mrs Clegg, of Campbell Avenue, Dumbarton, unsuccessfully appealed against her dismissal.
But the tribunal ruled her sacking was unfair. Tribunal judge Roderick MacKenzie added: "There is no doubt the claimant's conduct was culpable. The claimant could have been in no doubt that to generate calls was wrong, the effect being the respondents' customer may have required to pay more to the respondents."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article