Transgender person wins compo for job interview

seamus

Tbh, there's a lot of speculation here. Nobody here knows how long she was in the interview room. Nobody here knows what the reception inside or outside the room was like. Nobody here knows the content of that anonymous email.

All we have is her story, and the fact that Debenham's declined to deny it. "No liability" is a legal declaration, it doesn't mean that they didn't do anything wrong.

Seems pretty straightforward to me. To people claiming "she did it for the money", I'd imagine £9k isn't worth the sudden publicity and abuse she'll receive from the scumbags on Twitter.

keano_afc

suicide_circus wrote: »

ah right. i suppose that's about as plausible as the anonymous email.

Stupid to post if its not true though, especially as the subject of the allegation has already proven how litigious they are.

9k is worth it to debenhams to make it go away id think

""What we have here is a blatant case of discrimination where a young woman went for a job, she performed well and at the end of the day, she didn't get the job," he said.

"We've got a settlement but she said this is a bittersweet thing, (but) Debenhams are going to work with the Equality Commission."

fairly ludicrous statement tho. nothing blatant about not getting a job even after a good interview, and everything else is subjective.

file under dubious af tbh

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

seamus wrote: »

Tbh, there's a lot of speculation here. Nobody here knows how long she was in the interview room. Nobody here knows what the reception inside or outside the room was like. Nobody here knows the content of that anonymous email.

All we have is her story, and the fact that Debenham's declined to deny it. "No liability" is a legal declaration, it doesn't mean that they didn't do anything wrong.

Seems pretty straightforward to me. To people claiming "she did it for the money", I'd imagine £9k isn't worth the sudden publicity and abuse she'll receive from the scumbags on Twitter.

Of course it’s speculation. That’s pretty obvious. And you partook.

AndrewJRenko

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts wrote: »

Ava Moore.

We only have her word that the tone changed. The canteen comment makes me doubt her.

'We' don't have anything. We don't adjudicate the case. The Equality Commission looked at all the facts of the case, not just those that appear in a short press article, and made a decision to support this person to reach a settlement with Debenhams.

keano_afc wrote: »

Stupid to post if its not true though, especially as the subject of the allegation has already proven how litigious they are.

If it was stupid of the OP to post it, how stupid was it of you to repost it?

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts wrote: »

I often wonder if these job discrimination cases end up being counterproductive for the person pursuing them, even if they win. Well, the ones that attract the media’s attention anyway. Their name is then out there and another prospective employer might think “Hassle” and not even call them to interview if they google people before doing so. I supposed they can have their name removed from searches.

The CEO of the Irish operation of one of the big UK retailers had a previous, fairly high-profile, well-reported case for unfair dismissal against a previous employer here. It didn't seem to be counterproductive for him.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

'We' don't have anything. We don't adjudicate the case.

Thanks. I didn’t realise that until you just pointed it out. Phew. Next time I’ll try to remember that I’m on a discussion forum.

suicide_circus

seamus wrote: »

Seems pretty straightforward to me. To people claiming "she did it for the money", I'd imagine £9k isn't worth the sudden publicity and abuse she'll receive from the scumbags on Twitter.

or the fact they are virtually unemployable while the articles are still searchable on google

AndrewJRenko

suicide_circus wrote: »

or the fact they are virtually unemployable while the articles are still searchable on google

Exaggerate much?

seamus

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Exaggerate much?

It'll be fraught for her, sure. Background checks in Ireland involve googling employees (no, really) and looking up social media accounts. Incredible the stuff people put up about themselves online.

For front line retail positions, it probably won't come up. But it easily could in other jobs.

AndrewJRenko

seamus wrote: »

It'll be fraught for her, sure. Background checks in Ireland involve googling employees (no, really) and looking up social media accounts. Incredible the stuff people put up about themselves online.

For front line retail positions, it probably won't come up. But it easily could in other jobs.

For some jobs, nosey HR people might go poking around on Facebook, kidding themselves that it is important. But sure I guess it beats real work.


But to say this makes a person 'virtually unemployable' is just a slight exaggeration.

Strumms

seamus wrote: »

It'll be fraught for her, sure. Background checks in Ireland involve googling employees (no, really) and looking up social media accounts. Incredible the stuff people put up about themselves online.

For front line retail positions, it probably won't come up. But it easily could in other jobs.

I knew a recruiting manager and he did this. He showed me one CV which looked bullet proof, well written cover letter too... and then the social media account which was mainly a young fella falling around pîssed, and giving out yards about ‘the brits’.. (the company head office is in Manchester) so it was a ‘GO’ to ‘NO’ in a minute...

I’ve never been involved in hiring people but I could be tempted as many would be to browse...private up !

Eric Cartman

Strumms wrote: »

I knew a recruiting manager and he did this. He showed me one CV which looked bullet proof, well written cover letter too... and then the social media account which was mainly a young fella falling around pîssed, and giving out yards about ‘the brits’.. (the company head office is in Manchester) so it was a ‘GO’ to ‘NO’ in a minute...

I’ve never been involved in hiring people but I could be tempted as many would be to browse...private up !

+1 , in this case most employers are sick of this kind of 'woke' thinking. I can't think of a faster way to get your cv binned these days than doing a gender studies masters or similar, in terms of background checks, multiple recruiters and employers have illustrated to me cases where having your twitter account bio state pronouns or retweeting any of this faux outrage / woke culture crap will have you at the bottom of the interview list .

most employers are not recruiting politicians, they do not want 'culture shift' , they don't want HR's job made harder, they want a good fit to their existing culture which doesn't have these hangups.

Mr.burgess

wouldnt we all gawp if your man from telly bingo stumbled across the canteen in stilletos

ILoveYourVibes

Good for her for standing up for her rights.

padd b1975

Mr.burgess wrote: »

wouldnt we all gawp if your man from telly bingo stumbled across the canteen in stilletos

That Panti lad managed to turn a similar experience into a nice little earner.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Strumms wrote: »

I knew a recruiting manager and he did this. He showed me one CV which looked bullet proof, well written cover letter too... and then the social media account which was mainly a young fella falling around pîssed, and giving out yards about ‘the brits’.. (the company head office is in Manchester) so it was a ‘GO’ to ‘NO’ in a minute...

I’ve never been involved in hiring people but I could be tempted as many would be to browse...private up !

Aye, it seems commonplace. And is quick and easy to check. Nobody ask me for a peer-reviewed study cuz I don’t got one. This is purely anecdotal but I have various friends and family members who are involved in interviewing and figuring out who to interview and they all say that they google prospective candidates. I’m surprised that anyone would be surprised that it happens. They all said that you would be amazed at how much information there can be about a person online.

Peregrinus

victor8600 wrote: »

Well of course. A discrimination during a job interview is usually very difficult to prove, unless someone on the interview panel testifies that the person was not selected specifically because of her gender/race/address. Or if there is a procedure of submitting written conclusions from each interviewer (as done in my company) prior to voting on each candidate, but even then the company won't share those forms filed for other candidates.

When there is evidence of discrimination during the interview it most usually takes the form of "they asked an irrelevant question about one of the prohibited grounds". E.g. if, in the interview, I ask you how you would juggle the competing demands of motherhood and career, that strongly suggests a discriminatory attitude to female candidates who are mothers, or are of childbearing age.

And this, I think, is where Debenhams fell down here. It seems that they asked for the candidates' birth certificates during the interview stage, which implies that the information in the birth certificate - age, gender, etc - was going to be material to the decision about hiring, which of course it should not be. If they needed to ask for birth certs at all (and I'm not clear why they did) they should only have asked the successful candidates for them, after offering them the jobs.

Hence the settlement.

One eyed Jack

Peregrinus wrote: »

And this, I think, is where Debenhams fell down here. It seems that they asked for the candidates' birth certificates during the interview stage, which implies that the information in the birth certificate - age, gender, etc - was going to be material to the decision about hiring, which of course it should not be. If they needed to ask for birth certs at all (and I'm not clear why they did) they should only have asked the successful candidates for them, after offering them the jobs.

Hence the settlement.

I don’t know that’s where the discrimination arose to be honest. It wouldn’t be unusual that candidates are asked to bring a form of identification with them when they are invited for interview. I think where the discrimination more likely arose was a rather unfortunate gaffe on the part of the interviewer when they examined the form of identification they were presented with, and it didn’t correlate with their expectations of the person they were interviewing.

I think in the circumstances the way they are presented in the article that the candidates were put in a customer facing situation as part of the selection and interview process, and the candidates who were selected for hiring, the paperwork was done as somewhat of a formality afterwards, and that’s where the incident may have occurred which led to the candidate assuming (rightly as it appears), that they had been discriminated against based upon their sex.

Peregrinus

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I don’t know that’s where the discrimination arose to be honest. It wouldn’t be unusual that candidates are asked to bring a form of identification with them when they are invited for interview.

For what it's worth, I have never been asked to bring a form of identification to a job interview.

Plus, a birth certificate is not a form of identification. It may show that a person called Peregrinus was born on X date at Y place, but it does nothing to show that the person now showing the birth certificate to you is Peregrinus.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I think where the discrimination more likely arose was a rather unfortunate gaffe on the part of the interviewer when they examined the form of identification they were presented with, and it didn’t correlate with their expectations of the person they were interviewing.

I think in the circumstances the way they are presented in the article that the candidates were put in a customer facing situation as part of the interview, and the candidates who were selected for hiring, the paperwork was done as somewhat of a formality afterwards, and that’s where the incident may have occurred which led to the candidate assuming (rightly as it appears), that they had been discriminated against based upon their sex.

Yeah. If they only asked for birth certs from the successful candidates and then, having seen the birth cert, withdrew the job offer, that's a slam-dunk case of discrimination right there.

But if they asked for birth certs from all the candidates before deciding who to hire, that strongly implies that the information in the birth certs was going to affect the hiring decision, and since the information largely consists of protected grounds (age, gender, etc) that's also a pretty bad look.

So, poor practice on Debenham's part, and they wisely settled this case since they were on a hiding to nothing. 9K is cheap at the price; the bigger cost will be extra training for HR and management in best practice recruitment procedures, since they clearly aren't competent in that regard at present.

baldbear

NSAman wrote: »

Yeah, that struck me as weird too.... who does that?

Someone who discriminates?

dvdman1

Sounds like theres a lot more going on with this story than what was reported...id say Debenhams got away light
The guy was probably humiliated in that interview.

Peregrinus

dvdman1 wrote: »

Sounds like theres a lot more going on with this story than what was reported...id say Debenhams got away light
The guy was probably humiliated in that interview.

It's clear that the source of the report was the unsuccessful and aggreived candidate - she spoke to the Belfast Telegraph and is quoted at length, whereas the report has only a single quote from a statement issued by Debenhams. So, no, everything bad that happened to her, she told the journalist and at least the highlights of it appear in the newspaper report.

I'm quite ready to believe that the collection of birth certs from applicants wasn't intended to facilitate discrmination - that somebody had the half-arsed idea of doing the employment checks at this stage of the process so as to avoid offering jobs to candidates who, in fact, weren't entitled to work in the UK, and they thought of the collection of birth certs as an aspect of this. But they overlooked the fact that (a) you dont need to do an employment check on someone unless you do in fact want to hire someone; (b) taking birth certificate information into account in a hiring process looks bad, from an equal treatment point of view, and (c) it creates real temptations/opportunities for discrimination of this kind actually to be practised.

One eyed Jack

Peregrinus wrote: »

For what it's worth, I have never been asked to bring a form of identification to a job interview.

Plus, a birth certificate is not a form of identification. It may show that a person called Peregrinus was born on X date at Y place, but it does nothing to show that the person now showing the birth certificate to you is Peregrinus.

All very true, and I don’t think it’s unusual either that someone isn’t aske specifically for their birth certificate, but rather a form of identification (whether it be their birth certificate, their drivers license or passport is generally up to the candidates themselves), which they are requested to bring with them on the day. It’s not uncommon in retail and lower paying jobs where they have a high turnover of staff and seasonal work - they try to have the whole hiring process done and dusted on the one day.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yeah. If they only asked for birth certs from the successful candidates and then, having seen the birth cert, withdrew the job offer, that's a slam-dunk case of discrimination right there.

But if they asked for birth certs from all the candidates before deciding who to hire, that strongly implies that the information in the birth certs was going to affect the hiring decision, and since the information largely consists of protected grounds (age, gender, etc) that's also a pretty bad look.

So, poor practice on Debenham's part, and they wisely settled this case since they were on a hiding to nothing. 9K is cheap at the price; the bigger cost will be extra training for HR and management in best practice recruitment procedures, since they clearly aren't competent in that regard at present.

That’s why I’m suggesting that the interviewer made an unfortunate gaffe. I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that they found themselves presented with what has to be said are an unusual set of circumstances, and it’s likely they reacted instinctively and unprofessionally (retail management in my experience doesn’t attract the sharpest types, and no offence to retail management types reading this, I’m not referring to you personally :pac:).

I don’t know that Debenhams are actually all that likely to change recruitment procedures on the back of this one case to be honest. I think they’ll just be grateful that they managed to get off with only having to pay £9k to mitigate the potential adverse publicity that could have arisen as a result of the outcome had they chosen to see the challenge through -


The case was settled with the help of the Equality Commission although Debenhams accepted no liability.

Annasopra

seamus wrote: »

The fact that Debenhams settled instead of fighting it would indicate that they found internal evidence of discrimination and wanted to make this go away as quickly as possible.

So, no, I don't think this sets any kind of precedent at all.

I'm not sure the "birth cert" thing is all that weird. Companies who hire a lot of front-line staff will often make offers very quickly, so they'll ask candidates to arrive with their documentation in hand. This saves any back-and-forths getting details for someone they want to hire.

In the Republic you're usually asked for a copy of your passport, but a birth cert will suffice too.

Ye wha?

I have never heard of anyone being asked for a passport or birth cert at interview

One eyed Jack

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

Ye wha?

I have never heard of anyone being asked for a passport or birth cert at interview

Likely because you’d only have heard about it if it was an issue for the person. It’s quite likely in this case that all the candidates were asked to bring a form of identification with them, and it was only in the case of this particular candidate that the details on their form of identification did not correlate with the candidate who appeared before the interviewer.

It doesn’t imply that the candidate was actually discriminated against on the basis of their sex, all we know is that Debenhams chose to settle, while at the same time accepting no liability. It’s reasonable to assume that the candidate had been the victim of discrimination on the basis of their sex given the circumstances of this particular case, but Debenhams didn’t have to prove they had not discriminated against the candidate in this case, so we’ll never actually know for certain whether the candidate was discriminated against on the basis of their sex.

Peregrinus

A transgender person asked to produce "a form of identification" is very unlikely to choose their birth certificate, for reasons which in the present circumstances are obvious. If she brought her birth certificate, it's almost certainly because she was told, specifically, "bring your birth certificate".

Annasopra

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Likely because you’d only have heard about it if it was an issue for the person. It’s quite likely in this case that all the candidates were asked to bring a form of identification with them, and it was only in the case of this particular candidate that the details on their form of identification did not correlate with the candidate who appeared before the interviewer.

It doesn’t imply that the candidate was actually discriminated against on the basis of their sex, all we know is that Debenhams chose to settle, while at the same time accepting no liability. It’s reasonable to assume that the candidate had been the victim of discrimination on the basis of their sex given the circumstances of this particular case, but Debenhams didn’t have to prove they had not discriminated against the candidate in this case, so we’ll never actually know for certain whether the candidate was discriminated against on the basis of their sex.

Nope.

I am saying that I dont believe this is common practice.

Not sure why you are changing uk employment law from gender to sex.

marieholmfan

dvdman1 wrote: »

Sounds like theres a lot more going on with this story than what was reported...id say Debenhams got away light
The guy was probably humiliated in that interview.

Girl not guy.

Peregrinus

marieholmfan wrote: »

Girl not guy.

Better still, woman.

One eyed Jack

Peregrinus wrote: »

A transgender person asked to produce "a form of identification" is very unlikely to choose their birth certificate, for reasons which in the present circumstances are obvious. If she brought her birth certificate, it's almost certainly because she was told, specifically, "bring your birth certificate".

Unlikely certainly, but that appears to be exactly what happened according to the person themselves -


She said the atmosphere "went very cold" when managers asked for her birth certificate, which shows a change in name and gender.

"It went from 'welcome to Debenhams' to very quiet.


The candidate in question appears to have assumed they had been successful before they were even offered the position!

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

Nope.

I am saying that I dont believe this is common practice.

I understood that much, and I suggested that belief was based upon the fact that it’s unlikely you would hear about it unless it was an issue for the person. It’s common practice in retail and I’m basing my opinion on my experience of the retail sector and other employment sectors where it’s not as common to request that candidates to bring a form of identification with them to the interview or selection process on the day.

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

Not sure why you are changing uk employment law from gender to sex.

Where did I refer to UK employment law at all, or gender for that matter? The jurisdiction in which this happened was Northern Ireland so NI employment law applies, and according to the article the complainant took their case to the Equality Commission on the basis that they had been discriminated against on the grounds of their sex -


A transgender woman from Newry has been awarded £9,000 after taking a sex discrimination case against Debenhams.

...

Ms Moore's case was taken under the Sex Discrimination (NI) Order 1976, which makes it unlawful to discriminate against transgender people.


The relevant legislation is here -


Sex Discrimination (Northern Ireland) Order 1976