Factory worker awarded £10k for lewd message written by boss in birthday card

A biscuit factory worker has been awarded £10,000 in compensation after she was sent a lewd 40th birthday card that included messages about how her co-workers wanted to feel her breasts.

Lisa Vickers received the birthday card after it had been passed around for workmates to sign at the factory in Ashton-Under-Lyne near Manchester.

But she was shocked upon discovering that sales admin manager Dave Ravenscroft had written: ‘Lisa it’s your birthday, I bet you’re thrilled to bits, but not as much as I would be if I could feel your TxxS!!!’

She claimed the card was the latest example in a continued campaign of sexual harassment by 58 year old Mr Ravenscroft.

Ms Vickers, who is now 42, says she would arrive home from work crying and ended up so self-conscious that she ended up trying to hide her chest.

She also opened on how Mr Ravenscroft would stand outside the gates in the afternoon having a cigarette, watching women and making noises like ‘kwour’.

‘It was my birthday on 19 February 2015 and I was 40 years old. Debbie at work bought a birthday card for me and had a collection’, the 42 year old said.

‘Mr Ravenscroft wrote inside the card ‘all the best on your 50th Dave Rave’ and overleaf on the inside of the card he wrote ‘Lisa it’s your birthday, I bet you’re thrilled to bits, but not as much as I would be if I could feel your TxxS!!!’’

Her friend, Debbie Dooley, also told the Manchester Employment Tribunal would he would constantly mention Lisa’s ‘boobs’ and made no secret of his desire ‘to put his head in them.’

At the tribunal, Lisa says the final straw came when her 17-year-old daughter visited the factory and Mr Ravenscroft asked her whose daughter she was.

Upon answering that she was Lisa’s daughter, Mr Ravenscroft reportedly licked his lips and said ‘ooh you can tell’ as he licked his lips and looked at her breasts.

In a written ruling, Judge Tobias Ryan said: ’In our judgment comments that are made directly to or about a person who hears them and are about personal sexual attributes such as their breasts or bottoms are of a different character from general lewd banter in which people participate in the workplace from time to time.

‘The fact that a woman engages in such banter does not mean that she will not consider personal remarks unwanted.’

After the hearing Ms Vickers described Mr Ravenscroft as ‘a dirty little old man’ and said he should have been sacked.

She said: ‘I can’t believe he got away with it for so long. It was when he made the remark about my daughter – it was the last straw. I didn’t find it funny.

‘Fair enough I had to put up with it, him going on about my boobs and everything, but my child doesn’t.

‘He slapped other workers’ bums, he touched them and they liked it and they got upset that they had to write a statement about it for the tribunal.

‘I have male friends that wouldn’t dream of doing what he did to females.’

The tribunal awarded her £10,000 for injury to feelings adding £638 by way of interest and ordered they pay her £1,200 costs.

It threw out further claims by her of victimisation, constructive unfair dismissal and racism.