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That’s that then

A transgender woman made redundant by the Times has lost an employment tribunal in which she claimed to have experienced discrimination and unfair dismissal.

The background – not the legal allegation so much, the background – was really that since The Times does not uncritically support the varied trans agendas then therefore it’s antitrans in its working environment. Bit of a stretch that claim really.

A newspaper that allows a columnist to refer to “bumboys” may or may not be anti-gay, anti-LGBT or whatever, but the use of the word bumboys by a columnist isn’t evidence either way.

11 thoughts on “That’s that then”

  1. During the hearing, O’Donnell said she overheard the then deputy editor and deputy head of news refer to murdered trans women in India as “a lifestyle choice” – a comment O’Donnell said made her vomit involuntarily.

    Probably worth shutting down the Scottish office just to get rid of this loony.

    Bearing in mind that it is generally easy to argue in favour of candidate A over candidate B, I wonder why any organisation would employ someone who is demonstrably mentally ill.

  2. I must confess to confusion about the basis of her claim. Was there another job in Scotland she could have gone to, that some evil man stole from her.

    I do agree with MC though. If I was running the Times, I’d be glad to get rid of her.

  3. In her judgment, she concluded O’Donnell’s redundancy was not as a result of being a trans woman, a status protected by law.

    Anyone remember voting for this?

  4. To address MC’s question, apparently one now has a legal right to be mentally ill. Which begs a question. Is the State failing in its obligation to provide you with the mental illness of your choice? And if so, what do you fancy?

  5. If she (her job) was made redundant she wasn’t dismissed. If she was dismissed she wasn’t made redundant.

  6. Jgh – legally privileging people on the basis of their skin colour, genital configuration or sexual perversions creates a powerful incentive for them to claim discrimination even when that’s obviously ladybollocks. Some employers will cave in rather than face the adverse publicity of a tribunal.

    I know a woman who “worked” in a fairly senior position at a major British multinational for over 20 years, and by “worked” I mean went shopping during the day and never produced anything of value. Senior management was terrified of getting rid of her because she’d threaten sexual harassment and sex discrimination whenever she got called out on her performance, it was easier to just punt her around the business until HR eventually got round to easing her out the door with a nice payoff and her final salary pension.

    Obviously you’d need a brass neck thicker than Diane Abbott’s thighs to pull off a scam like that, but a non-trivial percentage of the population is sociopathic.

  7. @Steve
    Yes in the U.K. the tribunal process is fairly straightforward and with a bit of research you can submit the claim and go through initial arbitration stages yourself without involving a lawyer so very low cost. If it’s a large organisation then they will involve legal staff so costs to them are considerably higher, also if you can involve executives in the claim they don’t really want to spend the day at a tribunal hearing. Being offered a settlement to go away becomes a consideration for them given costs so possible to walk away before the tribunal part if you aren’t greedy.

  8. My ex-wife is a Hongkonger, and would love to be made redundant, but as a Social Worker her employers are terrified of destroying their diversity stats if they let their only Chinese employee go. She’s managed to get to the point of only working 2.5 days a week, and most of that from home, and took six months paid leave which was slid under the carpet as sick leave.

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