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A children’s chef who was fired after deliberately omitting two colleagues he didn’t like when he baked Valentine’s Day cookies for his colleagues has won his case over unfair dismissal.
Mike Harding, 30, was accused of ‘deliberately’ turning down the two women when he made the heart-shaped shortbread treats for everyone but them.
He was also charged with burning a cake that kids had purposely made for one of his bosses and then threw it away because he didn’t get along with her, a labor court heard.
After he was fired, Mr Harding sued Bright Horizons daycare center, claiming that a “clique” of female bosses had “conspired” against him, leading them to “try to coerce him.”
He now faces compensation after his claims for unfair dismissal and gender discrimination were upheld. The court ruled that the allegations of misconduct against him were “trivial.”
Nursery chef Mike Harding, 30, (pictured) was fired after he deliberately left out two colleagues he didn’t like when he baked Valentine’s Day cookies for his colleagues
At the hearing in Reading, Berkshire, it was told that Mr Harding started working at the company’s Wokingham Day Nursery and Preschool in 2013.
In March 2020, his bosses expressed concern that the nursery was not meeting the ‘parents’ demands to bake cakes for special occasions and that the chef was not providing the children with appropriate food.
He was placed on a performance improvement plan.
Mr Harding called this “drastic” and said he thought the “clique” of bosses was “trying to force me”.
He told the tribunal: “It is unreasonable and unfair to stop what I do to make cakes for children.”
During the hearing, it was said that around April 2020 – after the nursery was forced to close due to the pandemic – a number of serious allegations about the female management team were made on the company’s whistleblower number.
Members of the team came to believe that Mr. Harding was responsible for raising concerns, the panel heard.
In July, he was told he was under investigation for possible misconduct.
The allegations against him include that in February 2020, children and staff in the baby’s room made a birthday cake for one of his colleagues and gave him the batter to bake.
But he “failed to control it adequately” and it burned down, the panel was told. When asked where it was, Mr. Harding said he had thrown it away.
The employers suggested to the panel that Mr Harding had ‘deliberately burned the cake’.
A week later, on Valentine’s Day, Mr. Harding was accused of making heart-shaped shortbread for staff ‘of his own accord’, but ‘deliberately’ left out two staff members ‘because they don’t like them’.
In addition, he would have prevented a colleague from leaving the toilet with a trolley and followed another female colleague to a toilet three times five years earlier.
Mr Harding was invited to a disciplinary meeting in August 2020 and, despite his denial of wrongdoing, his bosses decided to fire him in October.
He took Bright Horizons to court, alleging unfair and abusive discrimination, victimization and gender discrimination.
He is now set for damages after his claims against Bright Horizons (pictured) for unfair dismissal and gender discrimination were upheld with the tribunal ruling that the charges of misconduct against him were ‘trivial’
The panel ruled that the investigation into these incidents was “unreasonable” and excluded information that supported Mr Harding’s claim that there was a “friendship group conspiring against him”.
About the Valentine’s Day cookie incident, Labor Judge Sarah George said: “You don’t always like everyone in your workplace, but Mr Harding has reasonably determined that this shouldn’t affect the way you treat people.
“No reasonable employer can take penalties for this with an employee without live disciplinary warnings, even if it was taken along with the birthday cake charge.”
Of the “deliberate” cake burn, she said, “The belief that a cook could have taken a cake out of the oven is a poor basis for concluding that he burned the cake on purpose.”
“We believe that the inquiry was not within the scope of reasonable answers and that there were no reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Harding had committed the alleged misconduct. He was unfairly fired.’
The tribunal ruled that Mr Harding was not guilty of following the colleague to the toilet and said of the other charges: ‘The other incidents can reasonably be described as relatively trivial in their own right.
Collectively, these types of incidents could at their peak be viewed as targeting individuals or to exclude them, and would certainly lead to an employer having to take some sort of managerial action, possibly formal action, but they didn’t have the potential to amount to gross misconduct either individually or collectively.
“We conclude that the plaintiff has not behaved in a manner that justified the defendant to terminate his contract without notice.”
The tribunal also ruled in its favor over several claims of victimization and sexual discrimination.
Mr. Harding’s damages will be determined at a later hearing.