Single mother Annette Cowley, 40, won her case at tribunal after she was sacked for refusing to work 16-hour shifts at Heathrow airport because she needed to look after her baby.

Alison Holt: "She complained and was sacked"

Ms Cowley said after the outcome: "People don't realise the damage long hours can do to your life."

Roger Lyons, general secretary of the Manufacturing Science and Finance Union, which backed Ms Cowley's case, added: "The culture of long hours in Britain is destroying family life and causing serious health problems."

Employment law expert Jonathan Swift said the ruling was likely to have an effect on employment practice across the United Kingdom.

Employment law specialist Ronnie Fox explains the implication of the ruling

"In practice, I'd be surprised if employers think twice about employing women with childcare responsibilities," he said.

"I think employers would look at a situation like this to see what they can and cannot do in regard to their workforce."

Excessive tiredness

Ms Cowley, from Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire, worked for South African Airways as a cargo officer, but was fired last year after complaining her long hours meant she was unable to care properly for her baby.

"There was no other solution as far as they were concerned," she said.

"When I said I didn't agree with it that was that, they sacked me."

Ms Cowley also raised safety concerns about the dangers of driving across runways in a state of extreme tiredness.

Roger Lyons of the Manufacturing Science & Finance Union: "It's a real warning to employers that they shouldn't discriminate"

An employment tribunal in Reading, Berkshire, found that she had been unfairly sacked because the long hours discriminated against her on grounds of her sex.

The tribunal ordered the airline to pay Ms Cowley three years' pay and criticised the "wholly unreasonable demands" over hours.

In a statement to the tribunal, she said working back-to-back shifts meant getting up at 5am to prepare her baby's food for the day, arriving at work at 7.45am,, and finishing at 10 or 11pm.

Ms Cowley drove alongside planes with passengers during long shifts

She said she then went to bed at one in the morning and got up four hours later.

Ms Cowley used to drive from the airline's cargo warehouse near Terminal Four and drive airside to aircraft at Terminal One.

Part of her statement read: "Driving airside - very tired by now and then having to get into the car and drive in a very hazardous and noisy environment, usually when it is dark."

The tribunal ruling said: "The respondent's working practices would cause concern to the general public, if known, whereby somebody working a 16-hour shift was driving a vehicle airside with the potential risk to safety of aircraft passengers."

Airline considers verdict

The MSF union is planning a legal challenge to planned changes to the European Working Time Directive, which it says will water down the 48-hour week.

South African Airways said in a statement that the case arose out of a "very specific" set of circumstances.

"The tribunal's decision does not, in SAA's opinion, mean that its, or any other airline's, overtime arrangements are necessarily discriminatory, unfair or unenforceable.