An engineer who was ‘significantly affected’ after being told he was ‘too old’ to cope with new technology and unfairly sacked has won nearly £25,000 in damages.
Mark Braithwaite, then 58, complained in 2022 after a younger co-worker suggested he would struggle with the demands of new technology following a row about a laptop, a tribunal in Nottingham heard this week.
The engineer said the comment upset him, prompting him to wonder: ‘I guess my time is up.’
This week, however, Mr Braithwaite was awarded £24,720 in damages including £5,000 for hurt feelings after a judge ruled that telling a colleague ‘they’re too old’ at work is age discrimination.
The judge too found that the remark ‘displayed a discriminatory mindset’ and did indeed affect the ‘sensitive’ engineer ‘significantly.’
The ordeal began in February 2022 when Mr Braithwaite was given permission to work from home for two days for his employer, drinks company Refresco, where he worked as a control engineer.
The engineer had needed to work from home to care for his daughter, who was ‘seriously ill’ that week.
Mr Braithwaite had taken home a work laptop, of which he was the main user but which was the only one on which code could be written for the company’s automated system.
Mark Braithwaite (pictured) has won nearly £30,000 in damages following a tribunal
Manager Gavin Clarke (pictured) asked Mr Braithwaite to return a laptop he had previously take home with him, a tribunal heard
Colleague Luke Beckingham told the engineer that Refresco thought the then 58-year-old was getting ‘too old to handle the demands of new equipment’
A few months later, in June 2022, the engineer was asked to return the computer to the office by his manager, Gavin Clarke, because it was needed to deal with an issue in the factory.
Mr Braithwaite, however, suggested an agency software engineer on site could deal with it, to which his manager responded that he needed the laptop ‘ASAP,’ even offering to collect it himself.
After Mr Braithwaite offered to discuss the laptop issue, Mr Clarke and a colleague, Luke Beckingham, visited his home the following day.
When they first arrived Mr Braithwaite said ‘you’re not coming in,’ telling them he was upset.
But when Mr Beckingham and Clarke refused to leave, Mr Braithwaite told his visitors to ‘f*** off’ and that they ‘didn’t need the f******’ laptop.’
Eventually, Mr Braithwaite handed over the laptop and the pair left.
The next day, Mr Beckingham told the engineer that Refresco thought the then 58-year-old was getting ‘too old to handle the demands of new equipment’.
Mr Braithwaite later apologised for swearing at his colleagues but was fired for verbal abuse and refusal to follow management instructions following a disciplinary process.
Mark Braithwaite took Refresco to tribunal claiming unfair dismissal and age discrimination
He took the company to the tribunal claiming age discrimination and unfair dismissal.
Employment Judge Louise Brown found that the claim he was too old for new equipment was ‘discriminatory’, but only reflected Mr Beckingham’s ‘mindset’ and not the company as a whole.
She added: ‘Our findings are limited to the fact this was said to him by Luke Beckingham and we find on the balance of probabilities that this reflected Luke Beckingham’s discriminatory mindset but we did not find that this could be imputed to the decision maker Gavin Clarke, nor that it proved others in the organisation also had this discriminatory mindset.
The tribunal concluded that the disciplinary process was procedurally unfair before awarding him nearly £25,000 in damages.
‘[Mr Braithwaite] gave evidence that the average age of the employees at the [company] was much younger than him at the time of the dismissal and at which point he was 58 years old,’ the tribunal said.
‘He said that ‘I guess my time was up,’ and that it affected his confidence to be told he was perceived in that way.
‘We found that [he] was a sensitive individual who has struggled to deal with his feelings following the dismissal. We found that the remark the company considered him too old to do the job will have affected him significantly.’
The case comes on the heels of a series of high-profile age discrimination tribunals.
Senior executive Glenn Cowie, 58, (pictured) previously won more than £3 million in an age discrimination case
Last year, a senior executive at a FTSE 250 firm won a whopping £3 million after being told by his younger boss that he was an ‘old fossil’ who ‘did not know how to manage millennials.’
The enormous payout to Glenn Cowie is one of the largest awards ever made by an employment tribunal.
A school worker in her 70s also won a tribunal after her headteacher told her ‘we’re not going to be here forever.’
The comment was made during discussions about Jackie Ware’s job at Horsenden Primary School in Greenford, west London, an employment tribunal heard.
The 71-year-old Mrs Ware had no intention of leaving her job but it was found that headteacher Emma Appelby and other staff at the school expected her to ‘give in and retire.’
After her job was ‘deleted’, Mrs Ware was unfairly kept waiting on garden leave for three months waiting for a new role at the school that never materialised.
