Banker at BNP Paribas wins £2 mn over equal pay case

A London-based banker at French lender BNP Paribas has been awarded £2 million ($2.4 million) in compensation after successfully suing the bank for paying her less than her male colleagues.

Banker Stacey Macken received one of the largest awards ever made by a UK employment tribunal, her lawyer Sheila Aly told AFP, calling it a “historic” case.

In a first for the UK, the tribunal also ordered an audit of the salary, bonuses and other compensation of other BNP staff, Aly said, hailing it as “a clear message to the industry that this kind of discrimination is not acceptable”.

Macken, who is still employed by BNP Paribas according to her lawyer, said she could not comment further because she is still in legal proceedings to get the bank to pay her legal fees.

“When the time is right, I will tell my story and people will be shocked to learn what barriers women have to go through to be treated as equals to their male counterparts,” she said in a statement sent to AFP.

Macken won her case in 2019 but the tribunal has only now ruled on the amount of the damages.

She said that her starting salary was 25 percent lower than that of a male broker colleague and that her first-year bonus was only half of his even though they did the same job and had received similar assessments of their performance in equivalent positions.

Macken described a humiliating and toxic work environment, in which she was subjected to degrading and contemptuous comments and once found a witch’s hat on her desk.

A spokesperson for BNP Paribas on Tuesday admitted that the bank “fell short in our duty” towards Macken.

“We are actively considering the tribunal’s judgement to see what we can learn,” the bank added in a statement.

A report published last month by the Fawcett Society, a leading women’s rights group, said that Britain was moving at a “glacial” pace towards gender equality in top positions across the workplace, with men outnumbering women 2 to 1 in positions of power.

The report called for targets to increase the number of women in positions of power, improved pay gap reporting and making flexible working the default for all jobs where possible.

Macken’s case prompted more than 100 prominent women in business in Britain to launch a campaign called #MeTooPay in 2019.

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