The only male member of an NHS health visitor team has won a sex discrimination case after his female boss told him to 'man up' in front of a room full of women.
Senior manager Lisa Sanchez deliberately excluded Pete Marsh when saying 'goodbye ladies' as she was leaving a meeting because of a 'growing animus' towards him, an employment tribunal ruled.
Mr Marsh - who has worked in the health service for more than 20 years - said he had grown tired of being the 'butt of jokes' about being the only man in the team.
The tribunal ruled that this culture had been tolerated by bosses including head of service Ms Sanchez, who was found to have joined in with the remarks.
Now, after his internal complaints of bullying were rejected, Mr Marsh has successfully sued the NHS for sex discrimination and Here is the website in line for compensation.
The hearing was told the qualified nurse had been working for the NHS since 2002 and started as a student health visitor with Manchester University NHS Trust in January 2013.
He subsequently qualified and at the time of the discrimination was a member of the inner city Cheetham and Crumpsall team, the tribunal heard.
Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Headquarters (stock image)
In May 2016 he became an accredited Unite trade union workplace representative.
Two years later he was involved in an altercation with a female nursery nurse on the team who had ignored his request to help her.
This resulted in her making a complaint about him which led to mediation between the pair.
The Manchester tribunal heard that this mediation was carried out by Ms Sanchez and Mr Marsh felt she had sided with the nursery worker against him and emailed her afterwards to express his dissatisfaction.
This 'irritated', Ms Sanchez, the tribunal heard.
At a staff meeting soon afterwards to discuss a plan for increasing the workload of clinics with no increase in time, the hearing was told Ms Sanchez demanded in an 'aggressive and confrontational' style which staff were a member of 'Pete's Union'.
'The tribunal considered Ms Sanchez' approach was intentionally divisive and intimidatory,' the panel said.
'The implication was that staff were to be seen as either in Pete's Union or not, and became about taking sides.'
Mr Marsh claimed that at a meeting in July 2018 Ms Sanchez said hello to every female staff member by name on entering and on leaving said: 'Goodbye ladies', ignoring him entirely.
In February 2019, the tribunal heard, a team meeting where concerns about poor staff morale were raised descended into a heated row involving Ms Sanchez and Mr Marsh.
Mr Marsh was the only man in the room with ten female colleagues, the panel heard.
'The atmosphere in the meeting became tense,' the hearing was told.
'There was a five-minute break after which the discussion got out of hand, with most team members involved.
'[Mr Marsh] complained he was being blanked. Ms Sanchez declared that the behaviour of the team was "childish" and needed to stop and that the team needed to adopt professional behaviour and to respect Trust values.
'Ms Sanchez also said that people could only speak when spoken to.
[Mr Marsh] objected to this and went to leave the meeting, saying Ms Sanchez needed to sort herself out.
'In reply, Ms Sanchez told [him], "you need to man up".
'The tribunal considered that her remark was said in heat of the moment and was unprofessional.
Ms Sanchez lost her temper and should have closed the meeting rather than attack [Mr Marsh] verbally as she did.'
<div class="art-ins mol-factbox floatRHS news" data-version="2" id="mol-4e636d20-41bc-11ee-baea-d5130c4997ca" website nurse told 'man up' by female boss wins sex discrimination case