Driver was wrongly dismissed for swearing ‘more common in the North’, court rules

A delivery driver was unfairly dismissed from his job after a judge said swearing was more common in the north, an employment tribunal has found.

The employment tribunal heard that Rob Ogden worked for wholesaler Booker Ltd in Oldham, Greater Manchester, for seven years and was sacked after calling a colleague a “fuck man”.

During the same office discussion about buns, losing weight and joining a weight loss club, he also told his female colleague: “No wonder it took you 19 weeks to lose a stone, it didn’t take me 19 weeks.”

The woman involved later lodged a complaint against Mr Ogden.

Judge Jetinder Shergill said in his 19-page decision that such language should not have been used.

But he added: “Although common day-to-day experience, particularly in the North, is that the ‘F’ word is used quite frequently in public, I believe swearing should be unacceptable in a workplace.”

Mr Ogden told the court in Manchester that the word “mong” was not used to refer to people with Down syndrome, it was a common term in the North for fool – a definition also used in the Oxford English Dictionary.

He described the workplace culture as “toxic” and “lawless”, with plenty of “banter” and back-and-forth banter between staff, which could also be “joyous”.

These included references to co-workers’ weight, use of the term “chubby”, conversations about the “fat club” and fake certificates left in the office titled “Winner of the Week” complaining about Mr Ogden’s behaviour. “no matter how good it is”.

Judge Shergill concluded that the problem was the lack of genuine enforcement of the standards and norms expected by managers in the workplace where there were more senior staff.

It ruled that Mr Ogden’s words during the incident in July 2023 were offensive and that it was fair for his employers to take disciplinary action against him.

But it ruled the firm did not follow a reasonably fair procedure before dismissing him in October 2023, ignoring the “wholesale exclusion” of workplace culture.

Judge Shergill ruled: “The claimant had not previously been brought to court for his comments, which likely gave him a false sense of security as this was not a disciplinary matter.

“The public person in the office suggested that the plaintiff was the person who did not have a chair when the music stopped. “There was a real sense that he was setting an example, and that was unreasonable in the context of the public office and the significant failures in the process.”

A further hearing will be held to decide how much financial compensation Mr. Ogden is entitled to receive for winning his claim.