"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 3

[AuthorisedCat]

Link to Thread 1, 7-Oct to 23-Oct; pre-hearing discussion, evidence from KD (Day 1) and BH (Day 2).

Link to Thread 2
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5432103-darlington-nurses-vs-county-durham-and-darlington-nhs-trust-tribunal-thread-2

Five nurses working at Darlington Memorial Hospital have filed a legal case suing their employer, an NHS trust, for sexual harassment and sex discrimination. The nurses object to sharing the women’s changing facilities with a male colleague, Rose, who identifies as female. The NHS trust’s HR department dismissed the nurses’ concerns, stating they should “broaden their mindset” and “be educated”. More details can be found at Sex Matters and at Christian Concern who are supporting the nurses via the CLC.
The hearing started on October 20th, with evidence starting on October 22nd and is scheduled to last 3 weeks. To view the hearing online, requests for access had to be made by October 17th. The hearing is being live tweeted by Tribunal Tweets who have background to this case on their substack. An alternative to X is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets
The Judge made clear at the start of the public hearing on Day 1 that only TT or press have permission to tweet. If online observers see/hear something in the court that isn’t reported by TT, we don’t mention it until the next time there’s a break. This is a very cautious approach to avoid any accusations of “live reporting” on MN. Commentary on the content of TT tweets is fine as soon as they’re posted on X.
Key people:
C/Ns - Claimants, the Darlington nurses
R/T/Trust - Respondent, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
J/EJ – Judge/Employment Judge
NF - Niazi Fetto KC, barrister for claimants
SC - Simon Cheetham, KC, barrister for respondents
RH - Rose Henderson, trans identifying nurse
CG – Clare Gregory, ward manager
KD – Karen Danson, first claimant to give evidence.
BH – Bethany Hutchison, second claimant to give evidence
AH – Alistair Hutchison, husband of Bethany
Other abbreviations:
WFTCHTJ – Waiting For The Conference Host To Join
ET - Employment Tribunal
DMH/H – Hospital, Darlington Memorial Hospital
CR/CF - changing room or facilities
IX - internal investigation
XX – cross examination

To those watching, does this guy come across as ridiculously in person as he does on TT?

More so.

😱Ours were always warm and on the turn, still can't drink milk.

NF - they were told if you didn't want to share F CR you should use alternative AT - not sure where you read that
NF - page 92😂

Is that where your username comes from?

"I am not responsible"
"I was not aware"
"I wasn't directly involved"
"Yes thank you NHS Trust for that lovely large pay packet"

That smell…um…lingered!

To those watching, does this guy come across as ridiculously in person as he does on TT?

I don't know, because I'm not reading TTs as religiously as I'm watching, but I'd probably say "More so."

I now see nauticant has got there ahead of me, but I'll post this anyway in agreement.

So the HR head has just admitted that their policy favoured men over women. Surely that's a bit of a slam dunk?

NF - in stages, pg 427.
J - bear with ... at a convenient moment...
NF - this is the best place to stop
J - comfort break, you know the rules. See you in 10 mins.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1983159315944092060.html

What is clear is that if the nurses didn’t go to the press all 26+ of them would be changing in a tiny meeting room. And Rose would be sitting in his boxers with his cast of laydeez.

The policy was illegal. They have pulled it following the Supreme Court ruling.

All that repetitive nonsense from SC about whether the letter was actually threatening was a red herring.

Threatened or not - the Trust had an illegal policy which it has now removed from circulation.

Andrew was leading a wholly inept dept and wasn’t even curious about the matter in hand. Disclaiming all responsibility for health and safety of the workforce - but that’s goes hand in hand with HR.

Isla may have been a Bumba - but Andrew is a class A bumbler.

So shocked how incompetent he is and how having met him the Trusts solicitors didn’t advise settlement asap.

Mrs H & Co - well done! You brought oxygen & light into a dark spot.

We will resume our Darlington coverage here after the break at approx 15:34. Earlier sessions of today and all previous days can be found on our Substack https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/eight-nurses-v-county-durham-and

He has awful body language in terms of conveying to the panel that he's giving full, frank, and honest answers to the questions.

ATv - I was involved in finding an alternative space

I'm puzzled about this alternative space.

Obviously it would be ridiculous to move potentially all of the women out of the women's changing room into some other space, and leave the women's to RH alone, but what then? RH decides he's left out and treated differently from real women, and joins the women in their new space. Who can stop him? On what grounds? That it's single-sex and women-only?

I loved drinking milk as a child, still do.

DH doesn't, and needed to persuade someone else to drink his when he was in primary school.

🤯

No I was trying to think of a name and happened to be listening to end of Still, Dr Dre

I grew up on the border with Northern Ireland and was insanely jealous that the kids just up the road a bit got those cute little miniature milk bottles. At school. For nothing.
Thank you for healing that suppressed hurt, ickky, I see now that we had a lucky escape😁

The other thing I'm flabbergasted about is just how unprepared these senior bods are when they turn up to give evidence in these things. I'm vaguely remembering a quote along the lines of confidence is ignorance?

I've said in other tribunal threads that in my job we conduct panel discussions with government officials, and "prepare" would be a massive understatement to what we do. OK, so in the UK barristers are not allowed to prepare witnesses like I do with panel members when we have rehearsaols. But if one of my panel turned up to give evidence without even being familiar with what happened and without reading the bundle they'd be fired out of a very big cannon.

Sorry, I suspect I'm as ranty as every one else is at this point. We've all had to deal with overconfident and underperforming men lording it over the women who quietly get on with the job and get overlooked for promotion because they're too busy working than going around telling everyone else what a great job they do.

I used to do anything to avoid drinking my school milk. DM was called in one Friday afternoon when I'd managed to drop it on the floor and break the bottle five days in a row.......

@Londonmummy66 Yes regular tears and some vomit.

I went to school in NW8, it was always hot in the summer and frozen in the winter.

I had read that the alternative was a locker room with insufficient lockers, but I didn't realise the nurses were not supposed to change there but in a meeting room where there was a single changing cubicle.

What was supposed to happen if a meeting was taking place when they needed to change, in the same way as Sandie Peggie who needed to change during a shift? If it was at a shift start or end, then presumably they were all meant to queue up to use the single cubicle. Also, where were the clean scrubs kept - in the changing room where Rose was, the locker room or somewhere else?

I'd volunteer to drink the creamy top of milk bits for the other kids, because then they could force down the rest of it.

Explains why I was a bit rotund when I left primary school.

those cute little miniature milk bottles.

Not so cute really. They often were 'turned' in summer. They came into the classroom in a crate. A few of the bottles had a coloured advert or something screen-printed on them. It was a big prize to secure one of thise 'special' bottles, which we called 'jacks'. A big status symbol when you were six.

And we're back ... to an empty room