Kelly v Leonardo Employment Tribunal Thread 4

Maria had a workplace rep.role, and said in her evidence that other people had told her they were unhappy. So she was raising a complaint on behalf of them as well as herself.

We dont know what n is is this case, but it is >1.

Why is all that relevant? Either they are single sex spaces or they aren’t.

The statistical argument is misleading because it fails to take sexual orientation into account. The vast majority of women aren't sexually interested in women whereas the vast majority of men (including trans identified men) are sexually interested in women.

Also you don't have to be "assaulted" to be harmed. We know it's not women who are planting hidden cameras, exposing themselves and engaging in voyeurism which are crimes typically committed by men.

Aw no, fuckity fuck. Poor Maria.

From the BBC article, "Judge Sutherland pointed out that only a single person, Ms Kelly, had raised a complaint - which amounted to 0.05% of the female workforce." Shows what Judge Sutherland knows about how hard it is for women to speak out about this.

Has that judge ever had to rely on public or workplace toilets???!!!How often have you sat down with relief before realising that there’s no frigging loo roll?
my last workplace was the worst for this due to those awful cats bum toilet roll dispensers. They got blocked so easily. At least once I resorted to getting tweezers out of my handbag to try and extract enough loo roll from the hole to allow the sheets to come through properly. It never worked.

Apologies the previous post rushed, am still at work.

It’s wrong. 100% of rapes in the UK in toilets are by men in my data collection. Many are not reported. Of sexual assaults and voyeurism I don’t think there’s a profession I haven’t come across where a man hasn’t committed a crime on a woman/child in toilets. Vicars, teachers, police officers, doctors. Most of these will have passed some sort of vetting.

There are no statistics on who commits what, where because no one collates them. This was remarked on frequently including by Panorama and Parliament (2015/6), Ofsted (2021) and yesterday in the Angiolini Inquiry.

The comment about the ‘lockable’ toilet is not correct if the company are following the Scottish building regs.

Men who end up in court for assault also say they are women at the time and then are tried as men. This complicates the judgement as does the orders they get - they are barred from entering women’s toilets and/or unisex toilets.

That’s some of my first thoughts. Much of my stuff is from England which have different regs. But the consequences of toilet designs are the same eg I have examples of several fatalities in Scottish toilets too.

EA2010 does not apply to WR1992 (Schedule 22).

WR1992 mandates provision for men and women (birth sex) separately.

WR1992 does not mandate policing of employees' toilet use.

Croft etc gave a discretion to employees to permit male employees to use female facilities in exceptional circumstances.

There is no need to consider medical treatments, birth certificates, GRCs etc because that would be unworkable.

T considered that complainant was not disadvantaged because there was a small number of women and transwomen, it was a secure, controlled environment, and there was plenty of unisex provision of good quality: the harassment claim thus failed. This was a fact finding so not appealable, but that does mean a claimant with different facts could have won.

There's a separate legal argument, that it's illogical not to interpret WR1992 on all fours with Schedule 3 EA2010 ie single-sex facilities at work must be single-sex to keep their status as exempt from liability under Schedule 22 EA2010. This removes employer discretion and obliges them to police toilet use. A closely related but not identical argument is that mixed-sex toilets disadvantage women more than men, leading to direct sex-discrimination which could similarly undermine Schedule 22 exemption from liability (on the basis that it goes against the spirit of WR1992 to do something which it was arguably designed to prevent). These arguments apply irrespective of the facts of a particular case.

The GLP JR application covers some of the same ground and is pending a decision.

"MK stated in evidence that when menstruating she was embarrassed using a shared basin when washing blood off her hands. Whilst it is accepted that menstruating woman may require to clean up blood, it is not accepted that this would be readily apparent to other toilet users given access to toilet paper."

Apologies if this has already been linked to above:
sex-matters.org/posts/updates/a-disappointing-judgment-in-defiance-of-the-supreme-court/

I wonder whether NC had an inkling that this judge was TWAW, which led her to look in detail at the panel for the Belfast Film Festival Tribunal.

On the plus side, there seem to be plenty of grounds for appeal, and hopefully it will be prioritised.

Is that actually in the judgement?
I have a friend whose peri flooding had her pouring blood out of her shoes down the sink in a restaurant bathroom.
Maybe the judge will tell her to pour it down the toilet next time.
But shoes don’t have spouts for accurate pouring, so if the blood goes everywhere it’s much easier to clean up from a sink than a toilet. You just use your hand to catch and throw water around and give the porcelain a rub, repeating until it’s clean. Anyone fancy doing that to clean the outside of a toilet bowl in a public place?
FFS.

Michelle Sutherland, salaried Scottish Employment Judge since 1.6.20

https://x.com/journalismseen/status/1996259935340867811?s=46&t=ZX_bLozRqm8etdGICMcAvA

The BBC have reported although not confident they have the correct Judge? Was it a man called Mark or a woman called Michelle?

This is going to get shredded if they can get an appeal.

Moral proprietary and social construct? For something there is no social consensus and there very much is a full backlash in progress about?!

Really?!

This isn't a point of law.

I believe this comes under the heading of 'lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Maya Forstater's twitter thread has a curated selection of problematic statements in the decision: https://x.com/MForstater/status/1996231547159019866?s=20

My mind is blown at a great many aspects. But my heart is shredded at the memory of Maria very eloquently and painfully spelling out the realities of heavy periods and menopause, only to get a decision that her dignity had been protected because there was bog roll in the cubicle, to wipe the blood clots from her hands.

And there's no problem with a woman sharing basins with men if she's cleaning herself up after a period disaster, because toilet paper is available in the cubicle.

And a woman dealing with her period is no different to a man having a shit

Apparently the judge seems to think that this doesn’t matter.

Yeah this is what my addled brain was trying to work out

A point of law is surely that under workplace regulations they have to provide single sex toilets?

My reading (IANAL):

• FWS applies the Equality Act which is provision of goods and services and public duty. It therefore doesn't apply to workplaces. This is bullshit because employment is a service and trans people can expect to be treated fairly by employers with respect to hiring and firing under the Equality Act.
• Women don't need special privacy for washing hands under the workplace regs because they can wash hands collectively with other women. Again bullshit because why would the Regs state completely enclosed cubicles for mixed sex use?
• Women make up 10% of Leonardo's workforce, so even if men use the women's there are enough toilets for 12-15 women.
• The number of complaints was 0.05% and trans etc represent 0.5%, so trump Kelly. Basically no-one else complained.
• She had privacy for whennon her period.
• She said that the comparator is a man in the men's. She should have said a man in the women's.

If I didn't believe otherwise I would say the judge was begging for it to be appealed.

I suppose at least Maria wasn’t facing a job loss and the loss of income, unlike Maya for example

I also find this a concerning point of view. It's not mathematically incorrect but it is also true that if there is just one other person in the toilet and they are a transwoman then (using the same statistics) they would be 9 times more likely to assault the other person than it they were female.

It is obvious that you are more likely to find another woman in the toilets than a transwoman but the concern is how much more vulnerable the user feels if they arrive to find a transwoman (or to have a transwoman arrive) in the toilets compared to another woman.

Oh yeah I’m sure there will be legal fuck ups and NC and the solicitors will be all over it