An ex-employee claims he was let go from his job because he raised concerns about people being told to work while on furlough.
Cramlington -based Triple Shield Property Maintenance is defending itself against a claim of unfair dismissal brought by David Snowball, who was employed by them as a painter and handyman.
Mr Snowball alleges he was unfairly dismissed after five years at the company for making whistleblowing claims. He alleged that employees were asked to work while claiming cash from the government's furlough scheme and promised they would be paid when the scheme ended.
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On Monday, an employment tribunal in Newcastle heard that Triple Shield accepted Mr Snowball had made "protected disclosures", but denied that his claims were true and said they were not the reason he was let go.
Mr Snowball, 54, claims he made an official complaint on May 14, 2020, about the alleged work and on May 15 received a letter informing him he was at risk of redundancy. The court heard the letter was dated May 13 - Mr Snowball says it was not received until May 15, but company director Trevor Thompson said it was sent to him on the 13th, the day before his complaint was raised.
Mr Snowball, who was representing himself, told the court he had received texts from a fellow employee, who claimed he was performing weekly work despite being on furlough.
He told Mr Thompson: "These are text messages dated May 10 2020, before I phoned [company director Julie Smith] and told her about the fraud, the seventh line down is me asking [fellow employee] Tom 'I thought you were furloughed?' Tom is telling me basically that he's got to do the alarms every Monday down in Teesside... So it looks like Tom's coming in while he's on furlough."
He claimed his colleague had told him he was getting paid "later on" after the furlough scheme ended.
Mr Thompson denied ever asking an employee to work while on furlough. He said: "I don't know why he's said that, I can't comment on what Tom's put in a text back to you but I know he wasn't doing the work."
He added: "We did have engineers who were working four weeks on, four weeks off as part of the government's guidelines on furlough... He did four weeks on, four weeks off, he didn't work while on furlough."
Matthew Sutton, representing Triple Shield, said the issue for the tribunal was not whether or not furlough fraud was committed, but whether Mr Snowball made a protected disclosure which led to him losing his job.
The claimant also asked Mr Thompson who else in the company was put at risk of redundancy and how the process was carried out. He cited a text from a fellow employee on May 15 who, when asked if he had got a redundancy letter, said "hahaha no, have you?".
Mr Thompson said all employees were made aware at a meeting in March that redundancies might be a possibility.
He said the rest of the firm's employees were told about the redundancy process in May over phone calls because "we couldn't bring everybody in".
The former employee said: "Did they have the same amount of consultation meetings as me, did they have the first, second, third meeting?"
Mr Thompson said: "No."
Mr Snowball asked: "Did anybody else report furlough fraud in Triple Shield apart from me?"
Mr Thompson said: "Not that I am aware of, no."
The tribunal heard that Mr Snowball was initially told he was in a redundancy pool with five other employees, and then that he was in a pool of just himself.
Mr Thompson told the civil court that he believed Mr Snowball had been made redundant because in his role "the work wasn't there for him".
The tribunal, overseen by Employment Judge Morris, continues.
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