Tag Archives: employment tribunal

Guardian: Journalists win claim of unfair dismissal from Sky

Two journalists have won claims for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination, it was reported yesterday, with a tribunal ruling that they were axed from their jobs at Sky “because they were mothers with young children”.

The Guardian reports that BSkyB now faces a £200,000 payout to Natalie Stone and Victoria Waterson.

The pair were overlooked for a new position of video producer, which was given to the then senior Sky executive Mike Taylor’s personal assistant, Dee Lakhan. Taylor, head of networked media at Sky Movies, had a “mindset adverse to pregnancy and maternity leave”, the tribunal found.

Both journalists are now seeking compensation for loss of earnings and injury to feelings, the report adds.

‘DON’T BE BULLIED’, said News of the World (in 2005)

Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson was yesterday found by an employment tribunal to have bullied senior sports writer Matt Driscoll during his time at the paper:

“Driscoll was sacked in April 2007 while on long-term sick leave for stress-related depression, which the tribunal found had arisen directly as a result of bullying behaviour led by Coulson, who was News of the World editor for four years from 2003,” the Guardian reported.

Lo and behold, when it came to linking to yesterday’s news and Journalism.co.uk searched for ‘News of the World + bully’, Google brought this instead:

A News of the World result from October 2005:

“THE News of the world is at the forefront of the war against bullying with our Helping Hand Campaign… “

“DON’T BE BULLIED

If you are a victim of bullying or know someone who is call free on … “

Unfortunately for Driscoll, the NOTW ‘Helping Hand’ campaign was aimed at children, not adults. It wanted ‘HEADS’ (of the school variety) ‘to get ultimate power to expel bullies’.