British IT worker who has been on sick leave since 2008 sued IBM for failing to increase his pay: $67,000
A British IT worker who has been on sick leave since 2008 sued IBM for failing to increase his pay during his long absence.
Ian Clifford went on medical leave for mental health reasons and later for serious illness, then filed a complaint in 2013 after his salary remained frozen.
IBM placed him on a Sickness and Accident Plan, guaranteeing 75% of his last salary, about £54,000 a year, until retirement.
In 2022, Clifford sued again, arguing that failing to adjust payments for inflation amounted to disability discrimination.
However, in 2023, the tribunal judge dismissed his case, stating the lifelong payment plan itself was already “very substantial benefit
Clifford said that it was disability discrimination not to increase the payments while he was off work sick because inflation was causing the value of his income to “wither,” per the employment-tribunal judgment.
“The point of the plan was to give security to employees not able to work,” Clifford’s claim said. “That was not achieved if payments were forever frozen.”
Clifford was seeking a pay raise of 2.5%, per The Telegraph.
Paul Housego, an employment judge, dismissed the case in March, saying in the judgment: “It is not disability discrimination that the plan is not even more generous.”
