‘Witch’s hat left on desk’ of City woman in £4m sexism claim
A CITY worker is suing a bank for nearly £4million after an alleged campaign of sexist abuse that included her boss calling her ‘sexy’ and a witch’s hat being left on her desk.
Stacey Macken, 48, claims French bank BNP Paribas paid her less than men on the same level and she suffered from a ‘hostile’ culture in its London office.
The £120,000-a-year worker said jobs were divided into undesirable, referred to as ‘pink’, which seemed to be given to her, and good ‘blue’ jobs that the men were given, a tribunal heard.
She also claimed her line manager Denis Pihan told her on her first day he was ‘worried’ about hiring a woman and did not want to disrupt the ‘laddish’ culture of the office.
And she said another boss, Matt Pinnock, would answer the phone with ‘hey sexy’ or ‘hey f***face’ and referred to her as ‘just a sexy product manager’.
She also told the hearing that a risk manager who called her a ‘lesbian’ was later promoted.
Miss Macken, who was previously a vice president at Deutsche Bank with 28 years in the industry, claims she was harassed the minute she blew the whistle on the gender pay gap.
In a statement to the Central London Employment Tribunal, she said: ‘In October 2013, I was shocked to arrive at work to find a witch’s hat on my desk and wondered what I had done to deserve this. I am aware Matt and a group of male colleagues who had been out drinking the night before had put this there.
‘Matt’s PA witnessed this. Matt has since denied this.’ Miss Macken, a prime brokerage product manager, who joined the bank in 2013, claimed she was discriminated against when she entered salary negotiations. She was paid £50,000 less than her male predecessor and £40,000 less than a man appointed to the same role six months later. Miss Macken, of Fulham, west London, is claiming sex discrimination, as well as victimisation and unequal pay. She was eventually given a £5,000 pay rise in March 2015 to ‘narrow the gender pay gap’. She is currently off sick with anxiety and is asking for £3.9million in damages because of ‘stigma’ and about £500,000 in back pay she would have received if there was not a gender pay gap. Tribunal awards are not capped if a worker can show discrimination or that they were fired for whistle blowing. The bank’s lawyers said in a statement: ‘The claims of harassment, victimisation and whistleblowing detriment are stale, scattergun and weak.’ They referred to Miss Macken as ‘defensive and unmanageable’ and said she labelled any employer action she did not like as ‘unlawful discrimination’. They added she was comparing her salary and bonus to more senior staff. A spokesman for BNP Paribas said: ‘We do not tolerate discrimination.’ A decision on the case is expected in June.