Trainee wins £360,000 at employment tribunal after boss asked her to ‘remove her jumper and marry him’
- Colin Higgins, 50s, ‘repeatedly’ asked Emma Tahir, 20s, to remove her jumper
A trainee for the National Grid has been awarded almost £360,000 after it was found that her manager sexually harassed her.
Colin Higgins ‘repeatedly’ asked Emma Tahir, a trainee project supervisor in her mid-twenties, to remove her jumper, encroached on her physically and asked her to ‘marry him’.
Ms Tahir told an employment tribunal in Hull that Higgins, who is said to be in his fifties and acted as a mentor to her, bombarded her with text messages and emails.
He told her that she was his ‘favourite’ and he ‘fancied’ her as well as writing in an email ‘marry me!’, asking her to repeat the comment after she didn’t respond.
He also asked whether the two of them would be ‘getting it on’ if he were younger, The Times reported.
A trainee for the National Grid has been awarded almost £360,000 after it was found that her manager sexually harassed her
Following an internal investigation into Higgins’ behaviour, he kept his job. But, in 2021 Ms Tahir resigned and sued the National Grid for sexual harassment, victimisation and constructive wrongful dismissal.
The trainee claimed her experience with the manager damaged her ‘career path’ and the tribunal awarded her £357,000.
In regards to compensation, the judge Joanna Wade said the award included £40,000 for injury to feelings and £10,000 for psychiatric injury.
Originally, Ms Tahir, who has a law degree from Leeds University, joined the National Grid on a construction development programme on a salary of £30,000.
National Grid’s revenue stream was £18.26billion last year and they employ just shy of 30,000 people.
The company was created in 1925 by Lord Weir to link the UK’s most efficient power stations with consumers via a ‘national gridiron’.
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