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Red dress case waitress wins £3,000 pay-out
A Muslim cocktail waitress who refused to wear a tight-fitting “sexy” dress at the Mayfair bar where she worked has been awarded £3,000 compensation.
Fata Lemes, 33, from Bosnia, was told she would have to wear the tight red dress, which she said made her look like a prostitute, when she worked at the Rocket Bar for eight days last summer.
At the time the staff uniform was a black shirt and trousers for both men and women.
On Monday an employment tribunal panel upheld her claim that the bar in Lancashire Court, run by restaurant group Spring and Green, had discriminated against her on the grounds of her gender.
Employment judge Anthony Snelson said Ms Lemes held “views about modesty and decency which some might think unusual in Britain in the 21st century”.
The panel decided that forcing Ms Lemes to wear the dress “violated her dignity” and created a “humiliating envronment”.
The panel said: “Plainly, it [the dress] related to her sex. It was gender specific. The respondents did not introduce a summer uniform for male waiting staff. Unlike the women, the men were not required to switch to brightly coloured, figure-hugging garb.”
But the panel rejected Ms Lemes’ claims that she was sacked from the bar, calling her original £17,500 claim “manifestly absurd”. |
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