A male nurse, who worked with an all women 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.
Pete Marsh was deliberately excluded by senior manager Lisa Sanchez when saying "goodbye ladies" as she left a meeting following a "growing animus" towards him, an employment tribunal ruled.
Marsh said he had become fed up of being the "butt of jokes" about being the only man in the team, which the tribunal ruled had been tolerated by bosses including Sanchez.
The male nurse - who has worked in the health service for more than 20 years - saw his internal complaints of bullying rejected.
Marsh said he had become fed up of being the 'butt of jokes' about being the only man in the team, which the tribunal ruled had been tolerated by bosses
PA
However, he has now successfully sued the NHS for sex discrimination and is 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.
In May 2016 he became an accredited Unite trade union workplace representative.
Two years later, Marsh was involved in an incident with a female nursery nurse on the team who had ignored his request to help her.
She later made a complaint and mediation was carried out by Sanchez but Marsh felt she had sided with the nursery worker against him and emailed her afterwards to express his dissatisfaction.
The tribunal heard this "irritated" Sanchez.
A staff meeting was later held to discuss a plan for increasing the workload of clinics with no increase in time.
The hearing was told 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."
It was during a meeting in July 2018 that Marsh claimed Sanchez said hello to every female staff member by name on entering and on leaving said: "Goodbye ladies", ignoring him entirely.
A general view of staff on a NHS hospital ward at Ealing Hospital in LondonPAThe tribunal heard that in February 2019, a team meeting to discuss concerns about poor staff morale turned into a heated row involving Sanchez and Marsh.
It was heard: "[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 Trust then launched an "entirely ineffective" investigation into the team and in November 2019 Marsh moved to a different health visitor team and in April 2020 launched tribunal proceedings against his employers.
Marsh's compensation will be decided at a later hearing.
