July 02, 2010
A female Vice President of collapsed global investment bank Lehman Brothers is suing her former employers after being made redundant one month into her maternity leave.
Elizabeth Spencer is pursuing Lehman Brothers for £150,000 after becoming the only employee of an 800 strong workforce to be made redundant following the bank’s collapse in 2008.
East London’s Stratford Employment Tribunal heard how Mrs Spencer joined the bank in 2006. After a series of promotions she quickly found herself as Vice President in December 2007. But, as the credit crunch hit the capital, Mrs Spencer took maternity leave just two weeks after Lehman Brothers was declared bankrupt.
A month later, a human resources manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Lehman Brothers’ administrators, apparently told Mrs Spencer the company only wanted “staff who were there”, not those already on leave.
“Faced with a choice of people who were there and a woman on maternity leave, he had no hesitation in overlooking and dismissing her,” Mrs Spencer’s legal team said of then boss John McDougall. “There isn't a single piece of paper that shows Mr McDougall made any discussion of the claimant and what she could do.”
After losing her job, the former officer in the Army Intelligence Corps began to doubt her self worth, telling the court how redundancy left “a lasting blow” as she became “profoundly miserable”.
Lehman Brothers’ HR department claim Mrs Spencer was let go as her job was no longer needed post bankruptcy as she was not “critical to the winddown of the company”.
Mrs Spencer, who was apparently rushed to hospital due to the stress of job hunting, will have to wait for compensation as judgement has been reserved for a later date.
