"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 4

[ThreeWordHarpy]

Thread 1, 7-Oct to 23-Oct; pre-hearing discussion, KD (day 1 of evidence) and BH (day 2).
Thread 2, 23-Oct to 28-Oct; BH (day 2), CH, JP, MG (day 3&4), TH, SS, ST, LL (day 4), JS, AT (day 5)
Thread 3, 28-Oct to 29-Oct, AT (day 5&6), TA (day 6)

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 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 Seamus Sweeney
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
SW - Sue Williams, NHS Trust HR
KD – Karen Danson, first claimant to give evidence.
BH – Bethany Hutchison, claimant
AH – Alistair Hutchison, husband of Bethany
CH – Carly Hoy, claimant
JP – Jane Peveller, claimant
MG – Mary Anne (aka Annice) Grundy, claimant
TH – Tracy Hooper, claimant
SS – Siobhan Sinclair, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust
ST – Sharron Trevarrow, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust, former housekeeper and wellbeing officer
LL – Lisa Lockey, claimant
JP – Professor Jo Phoenix, expert witness
JS – Jane Shields, witness for the claimants
AT - Andrew Thacker, witness for the respondents, NHS trust Head of HR
TA – Tracy Atkinson, witness for the respondents, NHS trust HR.

Everything is deniable, nothing is anybody's fault and NOTHING gets done ..

Hopefully something will happen now that the music has stopped

I wonder WTAF these people do all day. Polishing their shiny shoulders, I suppose. On £80k+ ?

NF You here talk about a review of facilities.
AM important as we didn’t know about facilities side of things. Also to talk to Alison Laidlaw and Carol Birch who also sits on strategic diversity group. She’s on facilities procurement.
NF talking about joining a group to look at changing rooms. This is ordinary pace work, not a response to a situation?
AM needed to be done even though outside my area

Two new additions to the under-the-bus queue, Alison and Carol..

Break - now frantically playing catch up on AM's evidence.

AM's role is defined on google as: "A Head of Workforce Experience is a leadership role responsible for designing and implementing strategies to create a positive and engaging environment for employees throughout their entire lifecycle at a company. They collaborate across departments to align employee experience initiatives with company goals, using data and feedback to improve processes like onboarding, culture, wellness, and internal mobility"

I see no evidence of any collaboration; quite the reverse.

When 80% of the workforce are women and 26 of them are upset enough to get legal advice, talk to the press, set up their own Union and threaten an ET you think you would make sure that whatever legal advice/poicies you had were watertight. I suppose they hoped that the ladies would run out of money and go away quietly.

TT

NF You here talk about a review of facilities.
AM important as we didn’t know about facilities side of things. Also to talk to Alison Laidlaw and Carol Birch who also sits on strategic diversity group. She’s on facilities procurement.
NF talking about joining a group to look at changing rooms. This is ordinary pace work, not a response to a situation?
AM needed to be done even though outside my area.

NF reply from Ms Birch as this also fits with plan for sustainable travel. What would this review achieve?
AM that all colleagues would be comfortable where they changed.
NF shouldn’t have this been done with the TITWP policy. Female colleagues affected directly by TITWP policy.
AM yes

break

My experience of the health service is that there are broadly two types of people - the ones that work like crazy and get more and more heaped upon their shoulders at every turn, and the ones who do very little but spend their time getting in with the right people and spoutng all the management jargon bullshit. It's always the latter that gets promoted.

TT

NF reply from Ms Birch as this also fits with plan for sustainable travel. What would this review achieve?
AM that all colleagues would be comfortable where they changed.
NF shouldn’t have this been done with the TITWP policy. Female colleagues affected directly by TITWP policy.
AM yes.

J Short break for 10 minutes

See also academia…

I'm wondering what would be an acceptable approach for the Trust, and other like them, to take:
We admit that we took a wrong steer on the meaning of the EA, we implemented policies which did not balance the rights and needs of all groups in the workforce.
We were not alone in doing this, it was not unusual at the time to interpret sex as gender ID, not biological sex. It was commonplace in our area.
But we now realise that in so doing we disadvantaged our female colleagues, and we take full responsibility and have corrected our policies accordingly.

If they said something like that, would they be setting themselves up for having to pay lots of compensation?

AM needed to be done even though outside my area.

Large wink - Oh, how I wish he had said outwith his area. I love that word but have yet to use it in normal conversation. Perhaps he's not been reading about ETs in Scotland recently.

No frantically needed. Summary, to help you:
I don't know
Not my department
Not my responsibility
I wasn't involved/didn't do anything

Too true!

AM that all colleagues would be comfortable where they changed.

More than a year onwards, rolled into a different meeting about facilities. I have many words and all of them are rude!

@NotNatacha maybe we should invoke the Fifer 😁

@NotNatacha 🥰 thanks for the TT updates 🥰

What exactly do these people do all day, apart from stick their heads in the sand and pass the buck quickly because they don't want to be the person getting grief for saying no to a man that is....

One man. One! That's all it takes for entire departments to be running scared.

If they said something like that, would they be setting themselves up for having to pay lots of compensation?

It's not their money, and if challenged they could point to it being generally accepted policy at the time.

They'd say they were working from home?

Not only is there a Head of WF Experience, there is of course a WF Experience Manager.

Agreed. And they'd have saved all that money on defending their deeds at expensive tribunals...

Perhaps that, plus a load of complaints and unhinged protests from the TRA brigade, and perhaps even a threat of a lawsuit from the grifting kimono fox killer.

I'm still not clear how you managed to quote something without the reference, but it sounds as though you are referring to guidance on the section of the Equality Act that deals with services.

This case is about employee changing rooms, and employer's obligations are detailed in the 1992 Health and Safety legislation. As per the 2022 Haldane judgement (and previously Croft v. Royal Mail), Rose Henderson is man for the purposes of the law.

One man who might have said no, but they never even asked!

Hmmmmm. Yes, I thought of the unhinged protests, but hadn't thought of potentially equally expensive lawsuits from TRAs.😒