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Beryl Scrimshaw |
Time, please, landlady told as she hits 60
A PUB manageress who claims she lost her job because of “ageism” won backing from her former regulars this week.
Customers at the Whittington Stone pub, in Highgate Hill, Archway, have called on the brewery to give Beryl Scrimshaw her old job back.
Mrs Scrimshaw, who turned 60 in April, is threatening to take her former employers to a tribunal, claiming she was unfairly forced into retirement.
She was transferred against her will from the Stone to a pub in Wood Green in September last year.
She claims she was given two weeks’ notice of the move Nine months later, however, the Wood Green pub, the Freemasons Arms, closed, and Mrs Scrimshaw was sacked and told to move out of her home.
Stone regular Mick Doherty, a foreign exchange worker, said: “We want Beryl back. We were very surprised when she was moved from the Stone. She has always run the pub well. She looked after the beer well.
“Under her management there was always a good atmosphere. It was a friendly place.
“Being 60 doesn’t hinder the way you run a pub. These days age shouldn’t come into it. It’s ability that counts.”
Mrs Scrimshaw, a mother-of-two who is now living with a daughter in Bromley, said she had worked in pubs all her life.
“There’s nothing I don’t know about the trade,” she added. “It’s in the blood. My parents and grandparents were all in the trade. I came into it at 18 and worked my way up.
“I was happy at the Stone for two-and-a-half years. I lived upstairs and was friendly with everyone apart from those I barred for bad behaviour.”
She was nominated three times for the Turn-around Pub of the Year awards. “Then one day the area manager told me I was too old to do the job,” she said.
She is convinced the brewery wanted to replace her with a younger manager.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” she said. “But I’m not even being offered any compensation or redundancy. Really I just want my old job back.”
Under age discrimination proposals from the Department of Trade and Industry last year, workers are to be allowed to stay on until 70 if they wish.
Mrs Scrimshaw’s son, Paul Dunphy, a construction worker who is a regular at the Stone, described his mum as “intelligent and articulate”.
He added: “She’s run some of the roughest pubs in Liverpool, Leicester and Birmingham.
“I’ve seen her march big strong hard men out of pubs without causing any offence. She can calm a situation down.”
A spokesperson for Mitchell and Butlers said: “We are currently in the process of liaising with Beryl Scrimshaw and her representatives to try to resolve her concerns.” |
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