Bank worker fired for Facebook post comparing her £7-an-hour wage to Lloyds boss's £4,000-an-hour salary

New chief set for £13.5million pay package this year



A bank worker got the sack after she criticised her boss's £4,000-an-hour salary on Facebook.

Stephanie Bon, 37, from Colchester, Essex, was working as a £7-an-hour HR assistant for Lloyds Banking Group when she heard about her new chief executive's mammoth salary.

Miss Bon went on Facebook and posted 'LBG's new CEO gets £4,000 an hour. I get £7. That's fair.'



But after her bosses heard about the comment she was marched from the offices and fired.

'That's fair': Lloyds bank worker Stephanie Bon, right, was sacked after she criticised chief executive António Horta-Osório's pay deal on Facebook

Last week it was revealed that the taxpayer-owned bank offered António Horta-Osório as much as £13.5million in salary, bonuses and other benefits this year to poach him from Spanish bank Santander.

The Portuguese banker will also benefit from nearly £900,000-a-year in pension contributions, to make up for his departure from Santander's generous final salary scheme.

The pay-outs caused dismay among taxpayers, who own 41 per cent of Lloyds after government bailouts rescued it from oblivion during the 2008 financial crisis.

The generous pension arrangements are certain to irk public and private sector workers who have been frozen out of their own final salary pension schemes by companies blaming difficult economic conditions.

Defiant Miss Bon said: 'I can't believe I have been treated so appallingly for what essentially amounts to a chat with my mates outside work.

'I was at my friend's having coffee and it was on the news. I went on Facebook and within a couple of hours something else came up so I changed my status.'

Miss Bon was working in the Colchester branch of Halifax - part of the publicly-owned banking giant - when she made the online comments.

'I went to lunch and when I came back, one of my friends there was saying: "They're talking about you with Facebook last night".'

Nationalised banking giant: Miss Bon was working at a branch of the Halifax, part of the taxpayer-controlled Lloyds Banking Group

She argued that she had not revealed anything confidential but her bosses were in no mood for forgiveness.

She said: 'My team leader asked me why I was writing things like that.



'Then my manager came in and said she was disappointed in me.



'She said I was putting the company down. But I did not write anything that was controversial.



'It was hard losing my job. Luckily I had my friends and family that were there to help me out.



'If I have got an opinion, I write it because I don't expect my friends to grass me up.'

A Lloyds TSB spokesman said: ‘Stephanie Bon’s departure had absolutely nothing to do with Facebook.



'Stephanie was employed via an agency on a short-term seven-day rolling contract.



'The work she had been brought in to do was coming to an end and so she was given her notice.



'It was only after the notice was served that the comments she made on Facebook then came to light.’

