Payout for Tube boss over delay in sacking him after harassment

Daily Telegraph Reporter

A LONDON Underground manager sacked for sexually harassing a female colleague has been awarded a £14,000plus payout after bosses took too long to dismiss him, an employment tribunal has ruled.

Olushola Adenusi, 59, was subject to disciplinary proceedings after he told a woman he wanted to sleep with her and that he could tell she was fit by her body shape.

The customer services manager was sacked for gross misconduct but took legal action against London Underground on the grounds of unfair dis- missal.

An employment tribunal found that, while the decision to fire him for harassing the woman, known only as C1, was reasonable, the 16-month investigation took so long that it became unfair.

Mr Adenusi won the case and will receive a payout of £14,478 based on his 17 years of service. The hearing was told that in August 2017 he had subjected the woman to a “tortuous” twohour return-to-work interview after she had had surgery.

The interview at Tottenham Court Road station in central London, where they both worked, should have taken half an hour.

She said she spent at least 45 minutes being quizzed about her anatomy and being asked questions of a sexual nature.

She said that Mr Adenusi’s medical questions were “unnecessary” and involved “inappropriate questions and comments”. Sitting at Central London Employment Tribunal, employment judge Richard Nicolle said of the return-to-work interview: “He said that it was important that she gets better after her gynaecological surgery as ‘she would need to please her future husband’; that she looks like she kept fit as you could tell from her body shape; and that when the claimant had first seen her, he had thought ‘wow’ and had wanted to sleep with her but having found out that she was in a relationship he had now had to control his thoughts.”

But while the tribunal agreed with London Underground’s reasoning that he was guilty of sexual harassment, the near-16-month delay between suspension and firing was “unacceptable” and also left C1 “in a considerable state of limbo for much longer than necessary”.

The manager had been suspended on full pay from Aug 16 2017 until his employment was terminated for gross misconduct on Dec 5 2018.