A restaurant manager has won £21,000 after she was sacked for complaining about temperatures which soared to 111-degrees and even caused a diner to run outside and faint.
Alice Bailey was told to 'get used to it' after she protested to bosses about the London-based restaurant's broken air conditioning system, which led to 'unbelievably hot' working conditions with sweat 'dropping off people's faces'.
Customers of PF Chang's Asian Table in Great Newport Street also complained about the conditions, with one female diner fleeing to 'escape' the 111-degree heat before collapsing on the pavement outside.
Ms Bailey was 'made redundant', but an employment tribunal found the main reason for her dismissal was a series of emails in which she complained about 'significant health and safety issues' her bosses 'preferred to turn a blind eye to'.
The tribunal, held in London, heard Ms Bailey started working at the restaurant in July 2017 and became general manager in January 2019.
The restaurant is owned by the Kuwait-based Alshaya Group and operated through holding company Diverse Dining.
In 2018, while in Kuwait, Ms Bailey told Alshaya's Vice President of Casual Dining, Jim Dunn, about the poor state of the restaurant's air conditioners, but he told her 'nothing will be done so it's better to get used to it'.
In July 2020 Ms Bailey then emailed Alshaya's Business Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Chad Mueller, complaining about several problems in the restaurant.
She said the walk-in fridge had been broken for two weeks, the phone had been down for nearly a week, none of the electric sockets in the pastry department were working and the pastry fridge was not keeping temperature.
She also told him the air-conditioning was not working so staff and customers were enduring 'unbelievably hot' working conditions with sweat 'dropping off people's faces'.
Ms Bailey sent an email in July 2020 to management stating the fryers in the restaurant were not working and 'the service in the restaurant had been unbearable - long delays, guest complaints, very stressful on the chefs'.
The tribunal heard these 'guest complaints' were mainly about the ongoing lack of effective air-conditioning which had subjected staff and customers to 'great heat and poor air conditions'.
Customer reviews at the time showed some diners suffered real illness, including feeling faint and vomiting.
A photo was shown to the tribunal of a customer receiving aid after collapsing on the pavement outside the restaurant, after she had left to try to escape the conditions inside, where an air temperature of 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) had been recorded.
Two days after this email, Ms Bailey was called by Mr Mueller who told her she was being made redundant due to the financial impact caused by the pandemic.
She was not given an opportunity to discuss redundancy options and was not told her role was 'at risk' as she should have been, simply that she was made redundant.
The tribunal heard all other staff were told Ms Bailey had been made redundant and was banned from the restaurant, which made her feel as if she was being portrayed as having done something wrong.
Ms Bailey said she was 'upset' and believed she was being targeted by Mr Dunn because she had voiced her concerns about equipment in the restaurant.
She was officially dismissed in August 2020 and, after losing an appeal against her sacking, went to an employment tribunal to pursue a claim of unfair dismissal.
Employment Judge Jeremy Burns ruled in her favour, adding: "[Diverse Dining] has not satisfied me there was a genuine redundancy situation.
"No real financial information has been produced except by [Ms Bailey], which shows that despite the problems caused by equipment and by the pandemic, the restaurant performed much better than expected from July 2020 onwards.
"What happened [...] was therefore nothing other than [Diverse Dining] seeking to justify and gift-wrap a dismissal decision rather than carry out genuine consultation before the decision was made.
"The poor refrigeration and lack of air-conditioning did pose a real health and safety concern which [Ms Bailey] had a reasonable belief about and was communicating to her managers in good faith and in the public interest.
"Neither Mr Mueller or Mr Dunn showed any sympathy or support for [Ms Bailey] who over months had asked for support and who had been struggling to deal with these serious issues which posed a risk to the health and safety of not only staff but members of the public.
"On the contrary, when she had previously raised the air-conditioning issue with him, Mr Dunn had expressly told her to drop the subject.
"I find on a balance of probabilities that the decision [...] was principally because [Ms Bailey] had persisted in her whistleblowing emails in complaining about and disclosing significant health and safety issues which Mr Mueller and Mr Dunn had failed to deal with for many months if not years, and which they did not want to hear about, or which they preferred to turn a blind eye to, and which they had been and were unwilling to deal with effectively."
