An IT worker will get a payout after suing her British employers for disability discrimination because they did not let her work remotely from Pakistan.
Tehmina Akhtar suggested she work remotely from a rural area near the city of Lahore, saying she was too anxious to fly the more than 5,000 miles back to the UK alone following a two-year career break.
Her request came despite her previously flagging concerns about poor internet and inconsistent electricity in the area, an employment tribunal in Manchester heard.
She lost her case for discrimination but is in line for a payout after the tribunal found she had been unfairly dismissed because bosses did not give her enough notice that she faced the sack over the issue.
The tribunal heard how the travel company refused Ms Akhtar’s WFH request, saying it was not ‘appropriate’ because she needed to be re-trained in its Cheshire office after such a long break – and also citing the connectivity issues she herself mentioned.
The software developer failed to return to work in person in the UK as requested and so was fired. She then sued for disability discrimination and unfair dismissal.
The tribunal ruled that refusing to let her work from Pakistan was not discriminatory, saying it was not Ms Akhtar’s anxiety that led to this refusal (as she had claimed).
It also accepted the need for her to return to the UK for re-training after a two-year break.
But it did find the company did not give Ms Akhtar enough warning that she might be sacked if she did not return to the UK.
Chester House in the town of Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, the headquarters of Calrom Ltd where Tehmina Akhtar worked as a software developer
Her employers drafted an email telling her she would be sacked if she wasn’t in the UK and ready to work at the end of her career break – but did not send it until they knew that would be impossible for her to do.
And Employment Judge Helen Cookson said they failed to consider alternatives to firing her and had not explained their concerns sufficiently.
She explained: ‘We accepted that [the company] had good reason to doubt the feasibility of [Ms Akhtar]’s proposal for working from home from Pakistan.
‘But given that this suggestion had been raised we considered that a reasonable employer would at least have explained its concerns to [her] to give her the chance to explain what she said had changed or to put forward other mitigating factors or even to put forward other obvious suggestions.’
With the panel concluding she was unfairly let go, she will now be compensated – but the amount will be decided at a later date.
Ms Akhtar was a Net Developer for Calrom Limited – which provides and develops software for airlines – between July 2017 and August 2022 in the town of Wilmslow.
In April 2020, near the start of the Covid pandemic, she was furloughed.
She previously had a panic attack at work and after citing ‘weak health’, she was allowed to take an unpaid career break starting in August 2020.
This was supposed to end on January 31, 2021, but she asked to extend it to complete an ‘online language course’ which she said was ‘beneficial to my well-being’.
This was permitted, but in May, she asked to extend the break again until January 2022 – this time because of her health, she said.
Including her time on furlough, this extension would take her total time out of work to almost two years – from April 2020 to January 2022.
Ms Akhtar was warned it was unlikely further extension would be granted.
She was also told she would need re-training on her return given the length of the break she would have had.
The software developer went to Pakistan in December 2021 – a month before her break was due to end – ‘to be with her family’.
In January 2022, when she was due to return to work, she told the company she was concerned about that.
She asked to work from home at this point – but added: ‘I would like to bring to your attention that working from Pakistan would bring some challenges since I live in a small town with limited infrastructure.
‘There may be some unexpected internet connection issues, internet speed issues or electricity downtime during the day.’
The company said working from Pakistan ‘was not an option’ – but let her extend her career break to August instead.
This took her total time off work to nearly two and a half years.
As August approached, she told bosses she couldn’t travel to the UK without her parents – but failed to apply for their visas in time or arrange travel.
Her employers drafted an email to her, saying she would be sacked if she wasn’t in the UK and ready to work on September 1 – but did not send it until they knew that would be impossible for her to do.
It said: ‘We have already collectively agreed that it is not an option to work from Pakistan from September 1… due to the limited infrastructure of the town that you currently reside in and unexpected interruptions to the internet connection.’
Ms Akhtar replied, as her employer explained, saying: ‘The factors which she had previously referred to explaining why she could not work from home in Pakistan no longer applied because there would not [be] electricity outages now summer was over and the internet in the area had improved.’
She said this meant she could temporarily work from home in Pakistan upon returning full-time on September 1.
But on August 31, the company emailed to say they took her failure to return to work in the UK as her resignation.
