A woman has been awarded more than £2 million ($2.7m) in compensation after she discovered a male colleague with the same job title and responsibilities was earning £40,000 ($54,000) more than she was.
Stacey Macken reported a culture of sex discrimination, victimisation, and unequal pay at French bank BNP Paribas, where she worked as a prime financial specialist.
Macken has now won £2,081,449 in compensation, which is one of the largest awards ever made by a British tribunal.
Judge Emma Burns claimed Macken’s male bosses acted ‘spitefully and vindictively’, and increased her compensation because the bank failed to apologise to her.
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The banker was hired by BNP Parabis on a salary of £120,000 ($160,000) in 2013, following her role as vice-president at Deutsche Bank.
She later discovered a male recruit was hired with the same job title and responsibilities, but paid £160,000 ($216,000).
Macken also claimed she was exposed to a culture of sexist behaviour, escalated by one of her bosses, Matt Pinock.
His former PA Georgina Chapman told the tribunal of an occasion in which a black witch’s hat was left on Macken’s desk after their team had gone drinking one afternoon.
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Upon returning to work the next morning, Macken asked Chapman if she knew what had happened, to which she replied: “I told her that I did not know, but I suspected it was one of the drunk team members, because they were the only people in that area of the office the evening before, which, combined with their drunkenness, made them most likely to have done it.”
She added: “Stacey was visibly upset and confided in me that she felt really uncomfortable working with those male colleagues, knowing that one of them had purposefully gone out of their way to leave a witch’s hat on her desk.”
Another boss was accused of using demeaning language when speaking with Macken, as he would repeatedly tell her, 'not now, Stacey' when she tried to speak to him.
“He did so often that the colleagues made sarcastic comments about it,” the tribunal heard.
Miss Macken reportedly made repeated internal complaints about the sexist treatment with no luck.
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She told the tribunal in her first four years, her male peer was paid more than £167,000 ($225,000) in bonuses compared to the £33,000 ($44,000) she received.
At the tribunal, Judge Burns said: “We consider the [bank] should apologise more fully from a purely moral perspective, but we decline from ordering it to do this.
“In our judgement, for an apology to be effective it needs to be genuine and heartfelt rather than ordered... We have taken into account the bank's failure to apologise when awarding aggravated damages. We consider this is the correct approach in this case.”
BNP Paribas told LADbible: "We at BNP Paribas understand that we fell short in our duty to Ms Macken.
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"We are actively considering the Tribunal’s judgement to see what we can learn. Our aim is to ensure that all of our people are treated with the respect they deserve at all times.
"We are pleased that the Tribunal recognised the seriousness with which we have taken its findings and the major steps forward we have made to try to ensure that nothing like this happens again."
Abbi Murray