The Bradford-based supermarket giants were ordered to pay £60,442.25 to mother-of-two Donna Patterson
Describing her reaction when the unanimous verdict was announced last Friday , she said: “I just sat there and tears streamed down my face. Just from the sheer relief that it was worth it – worth all of the stress, all of the effort and worth everybody saying ‘why not just walk away and move on’.”Ms Patterson started working at Morrisons in 2008 before leaving and then returning in 2018 to a buying role for the online sales.
She said that shortly after he was born she received a call from HR telling her there had been “a restructure of the online team”, but that there would be a job in the company upon her return.Ms Patterson said: “My baby was around two months old and it was during the pandemic so my head probably was not in the right place to have a discussion like that."At the tribunal that was what the judge was most frustrated about – there being no duty of care.
When she returned to work in August, Ms Patterson said she didn’t have an agreed shift pattern and when she approached her manager, he said he was expecting she would work full time. She added: “I said I can either work to the point of breaking to get this work done in part-time hours or do the part time hours and destroy the reputation I’ve built over 15 years.”
Her home insurance providers “didn’t believe I had a successful claim on my hands”. Other solicitors wanted tens of thousands of pounds so she decided to take it on herself, which she admitted was “petrifying”.