Custody officer job withdrawn for GC beliefs - Gribbon (SP legal team) is his solicitor

[InterrobangsArePureBias]

I wonder how many more of such actions will be launched. To adapt Jimmy Doyle’s phrase, “the spectacle of this nation’s [lanyard classes] enforcing moral auto-lobotomy as a condition of entry to [employment]”.

A prison custody officer who was sacked for saying he would not address male-born transgender inmates as ‘she’ or ‘her’ has launched legal action against one of the UK’s largest security firms.
Army veteran David Toshack, 50, was dismissed by GEOAmey during a training course only days before taking up a role as a prison custody officer (PCO) at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court.
The father of three told a safeguarding workshop that he would not be comfortable using a transgender inmates’ preferred gender pronouns and expressed his belief that a man could not become a woman.
It sparked a horrified reaction from bosses at the firm, which employs thousands of justice workers across the UK, who said his views were against the law and company policy.
…
He said: ‘I’m just a normal, working class person who’s never been in trouble with the law before, not got a criminal record, lived a good life. I’ve been prepared to go and fight and die for my country, and then I have come back here and been told that there’s certain things you can’t think or can’t say.’

https://archive.is/bxjqC

Original story about David Toshack in Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14963309/Prison-custody-officer-sacked-refusing-call-male-born-trans-prisoners-her.html

I think one of the guys from his course is on the witness list.

i think it is just really sad, DT has lost the job and his daughter and i can't imagine that this trial will help that relationship one bit.

So it is very brave of DT to do this.

But. I don't think he will win. It is awful, but i just can't see it happening.

And of course, his proposal of being respectful of everyone and using their name is exactly right. His suggestion to use initials instead of pronouns is excellent. His mistake was saying that he would do that, i think (even though i think he is right) instead of just being quiet and carrying on as he planned.

it's all so depressing.

The latest police guidance (after FWS) is that no employee will be obliged to search the opposite sex (I've tried to find updated guidance since FWS from Scottish Prison Service but have been unsuccessful).

If the SPS are continuing to insist that employees are obliged to search the opposite sex, they are going to have more lawsuits on their hands. So surely GA arguing that they sacked DH because he (allegedly) wouldn't search a transman is a terrible argument.

Thank you. For the claimant?

@Brefugee
I think I agree. He's getting done for putting his head above the parapet. Chilling effect in action.

The guy he mentioned, who walked out to the car with him. I'm looking now and can't see his name though, so maybe I dreamt it!

Why do you think he won't win, out of interest?

Maybe because we know there are judges who've drunk the Kool Aid.

He is Ex-Army from a combat zone which have communities who use children as live IED delivery systems.

He will have a search everybody mentality or risk going home in a body bag.

Not a runner at all ..

Well this is very true! But from a (sane) legal perspective, what would his chances be?

So far it seems to me that all the respondents have done is demonstrate that he has a lot of legally defensible views and beliefs. And that he won't lie on a form.

But that might be my unconscious bias 😆

For those that asked, the tribunal is listed for next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

So looks like it will finish on Wednesday, but I heard both barristers saying they were ahead of the game so may finish earlier. 😱

Women and babies

How many posts have there been on MN with people giving out that a womans maternity leave has to be ignored when it comes to promotions etc

As far as I can see, the only thing he as refused to do is write her on a form and would use gender neutral language when speaking in person. Hardly sackable offences.

We do not yet have compelled speech in this Country.

I think the sticking point will be the ticking the M/F box. He can't justify running his own policy against his employer as to how to record a prisoner's sex.

Thanks

Can a policy force an employee to lie?

@AnSolas I think that is just straight up bias, not unconscious (the pedant in me would say subconscious, but I may be wrong) bias.

But they are asking for the sex, not the gender.

Especially a Christian who follows the Ten Commandments?

Will it matter if the policy is lawful or not? Shouldn't they be collecting data on sex, rather than on self ID, as per FWS?

And following FWS...

He said as much yesterday and I believe him. He said he would search anybody.

because we are too far into the looking glass. And he's in Scotland.

He has, as pp said, stuck his head over the parapet and is now considered a legitimate target.

also i think a recent pp said that he said he wouldn't search a transman, but IIRC he said he would search anyone and had done that in the army? (i actually disagree with him there, but that's not the topic of the ET)

They should, but that doesn't mean they are. In a country where the government defies the law, anything goes.

And mine as I strive to catch up.

The employer wants him to record a trans-identifying man as a woman. It's the employer's form. The employer decides what it wants to be recorded. The employee has to fill in the form as instructed. Whether the employer should or shouldn't be recording trans-identifying men as women is several pay grades above the discretion of an individual PCO.

Any sane tribunal is going to say that whatever someone's personal beliefs, you fill in the damn form the way you're told. It's not a statement of creed. It's a form. Fill in the form the way you're told.

From GA's perspective (and his manager's), life is too short for this. Tick the damn box and let's move on.