An Employment Tribunal has ruled in favour of a Financial Product Manager who brought a claim for sex discrimination, victimisation and unequal pay against her former employer, French bank BNP Paribas.
Stacey Macken v BNP Paribas London Branch
The Claimant, Stacey Macken, was an experienced high level banking professional when she was headhunted by BNP Paribas in 2013. Despite her years of experience she was hired as a “junior” with a salary of £120,000 per annum, whilst a male colleague with the same role was being paid £160,000 (Ms Macken became aware of this after she joined the bank).
After a few months at the bank, she claimed that she had experienced various instances of sexist behaviour from Matthew Pinnock, who was one of her managers, and other colleagues. These incidents included someone intentionally leaving a witch’s hat on her desk which Ms Macken found when she arrived at work.
With regards to work bonuses, Ms Macken received just £33,000 over a period of five years whilst one of her male colleagues received roughly £237,000.
In 2014, she raised a complaint with the bank regarding the inequality in pay and bonuses and subsequently her relationship with her bosses worsened and culminated in a grievance process which began in 2017.
The case has now concluded with an Employment Tribunal ruling in Ms Macken’s favour, upholding her discrimination and victimisation complaints. The judgement stated:
“Far too little regard was given to the fact that the claimant and comparator 1 [her better paid male colleague] had exactly the same job descriptions,”
“We consider that the grievance process was really designed to reject the claimant’s complaint. No proper and rigorous investigation of why there was a differential in pay was conducted. We consider that was, at least in part, because the claimant had raised allegations of inequality of pay and bonus. There was a determination to defend the respondent against the allegations rather than investigate them properly. This was victimisation.”
Ms Macken is seeking £4 million in damages from the bank and the level of compensation is still to be decided.
Stacey Macken v BNP Paribas – Comment
Cases about banks and bankers always attract attention because of the sums of money involved but this case serves as a reminder to employers big and small of addressing differences in pay and of the risks of not thoroughly and impartially investigating complaints and allegations of discrimination.
How can Nelsons help?
Laura Kearsley is a Partner in our expert Employment Law team.
We can assist employers with considering equal pay issues and taking steps to address them as well as the best practice approaches to recruitment and pay reviews to avoid such issues arising.
We regularly support employers dealing with complaints and grievances from employees and our HR team can conduct investigations where impartial investigation is required.
For further information or to comment on this article, please contact Laura or another member of the team in Derby, Leicester or Nottingham on 0800 024 1976 or via our online form.