A man who had been on sick leave from his job for 15 years then tried to sue them for not giving him a payrise.Ian Clifford went on sick leave from IBM for mental-health-related reasons in September 2008, and was still off work in 2013 having having been diagnosed with stage-four leukemia.Clifford, 50, then raised a grievance with his employer, complaining that he had not received a salary bump during that five-year period.
The IT worker claimed he was treated unfavourably because he hadn’t had a pay rise since joining the plan in 2013 and suggested it was disability discrimination. He argued that inflation was causing the value of his income to “wither”.Clifford started working for US software company, Lotus Development in 2000, shortly after it was purchased by IBM in June 1995.