A Tube train driver who was unfairly sacked as he battled the debilitating effects of Long Covid has won a payout of more than £42,000.
William Salietti contracted the virus on April 6, 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic and was signed off sick from work.
He was formally diagnosed with Long Covid in February 2021, while on long-term sick leave, and he was ultimately dismissed by London Underground Ltd in September of that year.
Mr Salietti, who had worked as a Tube train operator since 2016, sued his former bosses, and at a tribunal in Watford his claims of unfair dismissal, disability discrmination, and failure to make reasonable adjustments were upheld.
London Underground Ltd, a subsidiary of Transport for London, has been ordered to pay the former driver damages totaling £42,476.24, including £25,000 for “injury to feelings” and more than £6,000 in financial losses.
TfL declined to comment on the outcome of the tribunal.
The findings reveal a botched process for managing the effects of Mr Salietti’s Long Covid, specifically not doing enough to find him another role in the organisation.
Under the Equality Act 2010, he was considered disabled “by reason of Long Covid”, and in July 2020 he was declared “not fit for work in any capacity” after an internal occupational health assessment.
Symptoms of Long Covid can include chronic fatigue, problems with memory and concentration - dubbed ‘brain fog’ - chest pains, and bouts of dizziness.
In February 2021, with Mr Salietti still off work, his doctor, Toby Hillman, a consultant of respiratory medicine at University College London Hospitals, told London Underground: “The prognosis of patients with Post-COVID Syndrome has been notoriously hard to estimate.
“Our service has seen improvements in some patients within three months of their index illness, and others (like Mr Salietti) have symptoms that last a lot longer.
“As time goes on, it is possible that (he) will enter into a chronic fatigue state, and treatment would be aimed at improving his self-management of fatigue and functional capacity.”
Mr Salietti was signed off work again for three months in March 2021, and a London Underground manager was privately told he could be given another 15 weeks of sick leave.
But Mr Salietti was not told of the advice, and after four weeks he was put into a “medical redeployment” process, in a bid to find another job away from operating trains.
In September 2021, occupational health said Mr Salietti was “fit for restricted duties on reduced hours”, and the redeployment manager noted in an email: “After about two hours of working his body becomes exhausted and he needs to rest.
“I asked him what does phased return to work looks like for him and he advised that he was thinking of three days a week and two hours a day for the first week and then building his time up.”
However he was offered a job – which he had to turn down – which needed to be fulltime from the start.
His employment was then terminated on September 22, 2021.
A LU manager justified the dismissal by suggesting Mr Salietti’s “non-availability for over 17 months would have contributed to regular train cancellations”, adding: “We simply could not allow the situation to continue indefinitely. We have to ensure that we have sufficient resourcing to maintain a safe and efficient passenger service to the travelling public.”
However the tribunal said no evidence had been put forward to support the claim of train cancellations, and it could not understand how dismissing a driver who was off sick would solve the alleged problem.
“We have concluded that the dismissal of the claimant was not proportionate”, the tribunal panel set out. “There was a less discriminatory way than dismissal to address the claimant’s inability to perform his substantive role, which was to find him an alternative role.”
The panel added that LU had adopted a “tick box” approach to meetings with Mr Salietti about his future, and a “reasonable employer would have adopted a more open minded approach and given greater consideration to whether dismissal was appropriate”.
