£360k ‘sexist’ remark
Company left reeling after secretary wins huge payout because boss told her: Women are more emotional
A SECRETARY at Britain’s biggest arms manufacturer was awarded £360,000 in compensation over a single ‘sexist comment’, a court heard yesterday.
Now London’s Appeal Court will decide if Marion Konczak’s payout was too high.
Mrs Konczak maintains that four men she worked with at BAE Systems had ‘bullied and harassed her, including sexually’, more than ten years ago.
The final straw, she said, came in 2006 when her line manager told her ‘women take things more emotionally than men – while men tend to forget things and move on’.
She went off sick with stress from her £ 22,000- a- year job, before she was dismissed at the age of 53 in 2007. When she took BAE Systems to an employment tribunal, 15 complaints were either rejected or not found proved, but the panel ruled her dismissal had been unfair and that she had been victimised.
After hearing her manager’s comment and her dismissal, Mrs Konczak was plunged into depression and had not been able to work since, her barrister Tristan Jones told Lady Justice Gloster, Lord Justice Underhill and Lord Justice Irwin yesterday.
Mrs Konczak was originally awarded £33,416, but challenged that and was given £318,629 in 2013 by a different tribunal judge.
At a third hearing in October 2014, her final award was assessed at £360,178 – about 16 times her final salary and more than ten times the original compensation figure she was offered.
But yesterday BAE went back to court to ask the three judges to reduce her award as lawyers claimed it was ‘grossly excessive’.
The court heard how Mrs Konczak, now 62, worked as a secretary
‘An affront to justice’
for a branch of the company involved in design and manufacture based in Samlesbury and Warton in Lancashire from 1998 until 2007.
Paul Gilroy QC, representing BAE, said Mrs Konczak made 16 sex discrimination complaints to the tribunal in 2008 about the behaviour of four male colleagues and also her line manager. Only one – relating to the manager’s comment about how men and women deal with their ‘emotions’ at work – was accepted by the tribunal, which ruled it had ‘pushed her over the edge’ and wrecked her mental health.
The lawyer said the award was far too high for a ‘single complaint of sex discrimination’ and asked the judges to dramatically reduce it.
Mr Gilroy said: ‘Compensation was awarded on the basis that the causes of her illness were not capable of being divided, with the consequence that her former employers must pay her compensation in the sum of £360,178.
‘The excessive level of compensation awarded is an affront to justice and calculated at a grossly overstated level.’
But Mr Jones told the judges: ‘The reason why she has not been in work since April 2006 is that BAE discriminated against her and then, a year later, when she was fit and keen to return to work, refused to let her return, victimised her, and dismissed her unfairly.’
The judges reserved their decision at the end of a two-day hearing and will give their ruling at a later date.