The claimant was employed as the Executive Director in the Strategic Planning and Business Management Department of the respondent. She started this job in April 2018 and continued until her dismissal in March 2020. The issue arising was the creation of a new office in Luxembourg which as discussed in 2017 to allow the bank to continue trading freely in Europe after the United Kingdom had left the European Union. The claimant outlined that the role of Chief Operating Officer and Chief Risk Officer (a combined role) was earmarked for her but she did not accept the salary when it was offered. Subsequent to that she was then dismissed with the respondent citing redundancy as the reason.

The claimant made a number of allegations about inappropriate conduct within the workplace. It was described as male dominated with sexually suggestive comments being made and overhearing these in relation to other employees. Some of these allegations did not have sufficient evidence for the Tribunal to make a finding of fact with it being found that some of it was hearsay. However, in relation to a redundancy meeting the claimant was told to make sure that she was ‘decent’ in relation to an impending video call. This was recorded and Mr Atkinson, the maker of the comment, said it was ‘light hearted’. Allegations were also made in relation to race discrimination and how the claimant was the only mainland Chinese women in the team. The claimant stated that one of her managers, Mr Lee, treated her as inferior as she was from Mainland China whereas he was originally from Hong Kong. Mr Lee did say he assumed the claimant had mainland Chinese parents but was actually American as she spoke with an American accent.

The points made by the claimant in relation to Mr Lee were found to be stereotypical view of Hong Kong Chinese men. This was partially accepted by the claimant in her evidence. As a result, the Tribunal found that Mr Lee did not have a discriminatory attitude towards Asian women. There continued a series of allegations that were made against various staff members but only one of them was found to succeed. This related to a point where Mr Atkinson and Ms Ford referred to the claimant as ‘one of the boys’ and that she was victimised when the respondent brought forward the date of her redundancy. The date was brought forward from 31st March to 20th March after the claimant had raised some of the issues noted above. The harassment claim relating to being ‘one of the boys’ was out of time as it had occurred in November 2019. Therefore, a remedy hearing was convened in relation to the victimisation point which the claimant succeeded on.

Practical Lessons

This case again demonstrates the importance of bringing a claim on time considering the one act which was upheld as harassment was then dismissed for being out of time. Many of the allegations that were made by the claimant in relation to sex discrimination or race discrimination were either not well-founded due to evidential issues (such as it being purely hearsay) or the fact that it was found the statements were made jokingly and they were not making a difference between the sexes or those of different races. It is clearly a fine line when it comes to statements which are made as ‘jokes’ or ‘banter’ and it is best avoided in the work place.

https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions/ms-z-wei-v-canadian-imperial-bank-of-commerce-2203667-slash-2020