Office workers who call their colleagues rude nicknames could have to pay thousands, after a lawyer was fined £31,000 for using inappropriate labels for his peers.
Leo Foster, a solicitor who worked at bank BNP Paribas in London, had to pay a £15,000 fine and an additional £16,000 in costs after admitting to using names such as ‘Mad Paul’, ‘The Idiot’, ‘Jabba the Hutt’ and ‘The Twittering Fool’ to refer to his colleagues, The Telegraph reported.
He also branded a female Asian teammate ‘Hu She’ even though she pronounced her name ‘Who-ee’, a solicitors disciplinary tribunal heard.
Foster accepted it could be interpreted as mocking a Chinese name, but insisted he had no racist intention towards his colleague, with his lawyer telling the tribunal that he was ‘extremely apologetic and had not intended to cause anyone offence or hurt’.
He also referred to bank bosses as ‘c***s’, the hearing heard.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority took action after allegations against Foster emerged in business newspaper City A.M.
The tribunal was also told that Foster’s misconduct had taken place during a stressful time and had been ‘disgruntled’ with management changes at the bank.
Foster admitted using ‘inappropriate, unprofessional and rude’ nicknames ‘on numerous occasions’ over the course of several months.
It comes after a HMRC worker who complained after her boss sent her a birthday card when she had said she didn’t want to celebrate the occasion won £25,000 for harassment.
Kani Toure was off sick with work-related stress when she ‘clearly explained’ she wanted correspondence to be kept to a minimum and via email, an employment tribunal heard.
But they sent her a birthday card anyway despite expressly telling her manager she didn’t want to mark the occasion.
A judge concluded this was ‘unwanted conduct’ and that the ‘repeated contact’ she received while off sick was harassment, adding that HMRC’s duty of care would have been ‘more effectively observed by complying with her expressed wishes’.
After winning ten claims of race and disability harassment and discrimination, Ms Toure was then awarded £25,251.62 in compensation including £20,000 for injury to feelings.
The tribunal in south London heard Ms Toure – who is a French national of African origin and Muslim – started working as a customer service consultant at the Croydon office in October 2019.
In March 2020, due to Covid, she started working from home.
In July 2020, after difficulties claiming utility expenses, she told boss Hugh Henderson via email she had been discriminated against, ‘mostly because of my foreign accent and origin’, although this was ignored.
Then, on Ms Toure’s first birthday during her time working there – on August 2, 2020 – he mentioned in a meeting that it was her birthday.
‘He had a practice, at that time, of keeping a list with the birthdays of each member of his team on it,’ the tribunal heard.
‘His evidence was that he would use the list to wish members of his team a happy birthday, and if it was a “special” birthday he would arrange a card from the whole team.
‘His evidence was that more than half of team leaders would have done similar things at the time.’
The next day, Ms Toure emailed him saying although it had been ‘very kind’, she wasn’t celebrating it for ‘personal reasons’ and asked her details be taken off any birthday list, which they were.
Mr Henderson apologised and explained that he would remove her birthday from his list.
By September 2020, the tribunal heard Ms Toure felt she was being ‘left out’ of training opportunities compared to her colleagues and made an informal complaint which she later said should be treated as a grievance.
In November 2020, she submitted a formal 11 page long grievance which contained ‘a number of allegations against a range of colleagues’.
As a result, she was transferred to HMRC’s Canary Wharf office on a temporary basis for six months. It was heard she was told she would have to withdraw her grievance if she wanted the transfer to be made permanent.
In June 2021, she saw occupational health, where a report found a tumour caused her pituitary gland to produce too much of a hormone called prolactin which could trigger migraines.
The panel heard the report said she suffered from symptoms of stress, anxiety, migraine, vertigo, weight loss, poor sleep and low mood. She was subsequently on sick leave from June 30, 2021.
The tribunal heard Ms Toure asked that correspondence only be done if ‘essential’ – and be conducted by email, as interactions made her ’emotional’.
However, in the month that followed, she was sent 11 emails to check she was ‘alright’ as well as a birthday card.
As Ms Toure had transferred to a different team with a new manager, Mr Henderson had not had the chance to brief her new boss about her birthday wishes.
As a result, she was sent a birthday card in August 2021 – something that the panel heard ‘always’ happened to new members of the team.
The panel heard this ‘repeated contact’ had ‘exacerbated’ her symptoms.
Ms Toure remained absent from work until she was sent a letter in November 2021, warning her she faced ‘formal steps regarding her sickness absence’.
She then took HMRC to the tribunal, making over 20 allegations of race and disability harassment, as well as discrimination and victimisation. Ten of her claims were successful.