THE male-dominated domain of the City received an embarrassing reprimand yesterday when an employment tribunal upheld the sex discrimination claims of a female banker.
Arianna McGregor-Mezzotero, 37, who said that she had been sidelined by her bosses after taking breaks from her 12-year career after the births of her two children, is expected to receive about £500,000 in compensation.
The tribunal, which will set the amount in September, said it had “no hesitation” in concluding that her treatment by the French bank BNP Paribas was “exceedingly poor”.
The case coincides with a £7.5 million claim for sex discrimination brought against the investment bank Merrill Lynch — the latest in a string of claims by women who have allegedly fallen victim to the City’s macho culture.
The Italian-born Mrs McGregor-Mezzotero, who claimed that she was treated in a humiliating and offensive way by her bosses over her pregnancies, had her bonus for 2001 slashed from £175,000 — proposed by the bank before it knew of her condition — to £31,000. Her male colleagues received up to ten times more.
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Upholding her claim over bonuses for 2000, 2001 and 2002, the tribunal panel agreed that there had been unlawful discrimination simply by comparison with the bonuses paid to her male colleagues.
Mrs McGregor-Mezzotero, who is still employed by the bank, declined to comment after the ruling by Woburn Place Employment Tribunal in Central London. David Whincup, her lawyer, said that she was delighted and that she was hoping for a substantial sum in compensation.
He said: “It’s been such a long slog that when I told her the result there was silence because she was so overwhelmed, but I think she is delighted and rightly so, because she’s been made to fight a long and bitter battle over things that weren’t really defensible.
“It’s a repeated lesson to the City: if you are going to make bonus decisions you have to justify them. We are hoping for a sum in the high six figures in compensation.”
During her evidence Mrs McGregor-Mezzotero said that she had been forgotten by her bosses and colleagues after taking her maternity breaks. She said: “Being on maternity leave destroys your value. It happened to me.”
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Mrs McGregor-Mezzotero, from Chingford, East London, claimed that she was shifted to a different division and given poor clients after she returned from maternity leave in May 2000, after the birth of her first child.
Although the tribunal rejected her claim for discrimination in relation to this on the technicality that it was lodged too late, it found that it was important background for her later complaints.
When she returned from her second maternity leave in November 2002, her post in the bank’s Northern Europe Financial Institutions Group had become a job share and the tribunal was told how the bank tried to freeze her out in an attempt to get her to resign.
Mrs McGregor-Mezzotero said that Paul Hearn, one of her bosses, had repeatedly asked her if she really wanted her job back when she attended a pre-return to work meeting in October 2002. “He told me there was no job for me.”
She was also insulted by a male colleague commenting on tough market conditions who told her: “You should have stayed on maternity leave for another nine months. Actually, you should get pregnant again.”
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Mrs McGregor-Mezzotero told the tribunal: “This was a fundamental change to my job function, a breach of contract, humiliating, offensive and amounted to a deliberate undermining of my position and would have been recognised as such by other staff members and clients.
“It is my belief that it was still the bank’s intention to make my position on my return from maternity leave untenable in the hope that I would leave the bank and they could revert to the one person they wanted in that role.”
In its findings the tribunal commented: “We have no doubt that on her return to work the applicant was treated differently from how she had been treated before she went on maternity leave. If the applicant had not been on maternity leave she would have continued working as previously. She was therefore discriminated against, contrary to the 1975 Act. We are of the view that the treatment of the applicant by the respondent was exceedingly poor.”
But the tribunal failed to uphold some of her complaints relating to unfair treatment after taking maternity leave, including the claim that she was not allowed to pitch an idea to a firm that she had had before going on maternity leave.
BNP Paribas said that it is considering an appeal against the ruling.