An Auckland company has been ordered to pay a former employee $6000 after she felt forced out of her job through stress caused by office conflict.
The Employment Relations Authority case stemmed from an incident in April last year when an employee of the Fox & Gunn importing
company told a colleague he hated his manager and that he and his mates planned to "deal with him".
The woman who heard the threat, Jennifer Gillespie, became frightened and told the manager, who then passed it on to the company's managing director, Ken Russell.
Mr Russell got Ms Gillespie to put what she had heard in writing and initially told her that her name would not be passed on to the employee - known as "M".
M, who had been described by another employer as "very unstable", was later sacked by Mr Russell, but Mr Russell also admitted to him it was Ms Gillespie who had passed on the information about the threat.
M confronted Ms Gillespie about the issue as he left the meeting with his boss and later phoned her wanting to know why she had "lied".
Ms Gillespie called in sick the next day and her anxiety and stress, later attributed by a doctor to the run of events at work, kept her from returning to Fox & Gunn.
Her grievance was that the disclosure of information she passed in confidence to her manager breached her employment agreement and amounted to unjustifiable constructive dismissal.
She said she could no longer work for an employer she couldn't trust, and she didn't feel safe at the firm.
Fox & Gunn said it had tried to coax Ms Gillespie back to work and paid her during her time off, but that she had resigned on her own accord.
The Employment Relations Authority said it was an unfortunate case but accepted it amounted to constructive dismissal.
It awarded Ms Gillespie $6000 pursuant to the Employment Relations Act and wages for the one week between when her pay from Fox & Gunn stopped and when she started her new job.
- NZPA
