A female director at an investment management company who was told her trousers made her look ‘frumpy’ has lost claims for unfair dismissal, sex and race discrimination at the employment tribunal.
Ms Zhang was employed as a deputy design director at Greenland Investment until her employment ended in March 2021.
She had relocated to the UK from China for the role, and in May 2020 approached the CEO of the company to see if it would support her in her application for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK.
However, in July 2020, the company gave her notice of termination without following any procedure. In August, she faced an issue with her ILR application and told the tribunal that Greenland had forced her to resign before it would support her.
At a tribunal held last November, her former employer argued that it had recommended she instruct a solicitor to help with her application, and that there had been discussions prior to August 2020 about potentially making her role redundant due to lack of work.
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The company and its deputy HR director (the second respondent) said Ms Zhang had offered to sign a resignation letter should this situation arise, additionally as a means of protecting the business against any future claims.
By October 2020, she was informed her position had been terminated and her employment had ended on 30 September 2020, when her Tier 2 visa had run out.
However, workloads improved at the company and she was re-engaged as an employee on 5 December 2020 and given a new employee number. Her ILR was granted in January 2021.
Later that month there was a discussion following Ms Zhang’s appraisal about being open to alternative work as much of her own work had diminished. She was resistant to the idea of being placed on furlough and was placed at risk of redundancy in February 2021.
She submitted a formal grievance, but her employment ended on 11 March 2021, when Greenland made a deduction regarding holiday pay.
A tribunal claim was lodged in July 2021 for unfair dismissal, direct race and sex discrimination, harassment, victimisation, unlawful deduction from wages and unpaid holiday pay.
Among the allegations made against her former employer, Ms Zhang claimed that the deputy HR director had been “spreading rumours” about her being on furlough or that she was leaving; that the grievance procedure was not properly followed; and that she had not been considered for a bonus in March 2021.
She also claimed that the manner of her redundancy and lack of support for her ILR application amounted to less favourable treatment on the grounds of race and sex.
Her claim for harassment was based on the company’s alleged failure to support her in her ILR application but also a comment from the HR director that her trousers made her look like a “frumpy grandmother/auntie”.
In a judgment published last week, the tribunal concluded that she had not been subject to less favourable treatment, noting that in many of the instances, Ms Zhang had raised a hypothetical comparator rather than an actual one.
Regarding the comment about her trousers, it ruled that “such a comment was unwanted conduct related to sex” because it was inherently linked to gender and “had the purpose or effect of violating the claimant’s dignity”.
However, the tribunal pointed out that this incident had occurred in November 2020, and so was outside the time limits for lodging a claim with Acas or a tribunal.
On claims of unlawful deduction from wages and holiday pay, the tribunal found that she had not been entitled to be paid for unpaid accrued holidays in the short period of her not being employed between September 2020 and November 2020, so the company was within its rights to claim back any money owed.
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