Joe Harker
A man who sued his employer in an attempt to get a pay rise after spending 15 years off sick said he was not greedy after a judge threw his case out of court.
IBM employee Ian Clifford has been on sick leave since 2008, with a court hearing he was originally signed off sick for mental health reasons and according to his LinkedIn profile has been 'medically retired' since 2013.
Clifford is terminally ill, having been diagnosed with stage four leukaemia in 2012, and in 2013 he reached a 'compromise agreement' with IBM where he would be put on their disability plan.
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This meant Clifford would receive an annual payment of £54,028 until he was 65 and had no obligation to work.
However, he sued IBM for not since giving him a pay rise, arguing that he has seen his salary 'wither' over the last few years due to rocketing inflation.
It's an issue which has hit many Brits in the pocket, the same amount of money in 2023 just doesn't buy you anywhere near as much as it did in 2008, and Clifford claimed he'd been the victim of disability discrimination.
He took IBM to court over the matter but in the end employment judge Paul Housego threw the case out of court.
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In his ruling, he said: “The complaint is in fact that the benefit of being an inactive employee on the Plan is not generous enough, because the payments have been at a fixed level since April 6, 2013, now 10 years, and may remain so.
“The claim is that the absence of increase in salary is disability discrimination because it is less favourable treatment than afforded those not disabled.
"This contention is not sustainable because only the disabled can benefit from the plan. It is not disability discrimination that the plan is not even more generous.”
After the judge made his ruling that Clifford's claims had 'no reasonable prospect of success' the IBM employee spoke out to say he wasn't being greedy by asking for a pay rise.
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He told the Daily Telegraph: "I am on chemotherapy and have been for many years and have been extremely unwell.
“People may think, yes it's generous, but firstly those amounts are gross not taxed. I do pay National Insurance on those amounts.
“Your mortgage doesn't go down because you are sick. I had to use all my savings to bring this case and more and had to borrow money on a credit card. It's left me financially very vulnerable.
"People will still think it's greedy but at the end of the day, yes it's unfortunate, but that was a benefit I got with the job."