A female train signaller has won a further £36,000 after sexist male colleagues watched pornography in front of her.
Network Rail worker Rowena Owens had already received a £138,012 payout after successfully suing for discrimination on appeal in 2024 following a five year legal battle.
Now she has been awarded an extra £36,669 in costs, meaning her total payout is £174,681.
Ms Owens complained about the behaviour of at least 16 colleagues at the male-dominated signal centre they worked at in Wimbledon, London.
She was quizzed about oral sex, had to put up with looking at images of topless women around the office, and said female train drivers were routinely unfairly criticised.
Her colleagues regularly watched porn in the office and in one instance waved a sex toy at her.
An employment tribunal held in Croydon, London, found there were at least 25 separate incidents of sex discrimination at the large signal centre.
The tribunal heard Ms Owens moved to the Wimbledon site in November 2015, where there were only ‘two or three’ women out of about 40 staff in total.
Network Rail worker Rowena Owens (not pictured) had already received a £138,012 payout after successfully suing when she complained about the behaviour of at least 16 colleagues at the male-dominated signal centre they worked at in Wimbledon, London
On her first day at work, when Ms Owens offered to make tea for her colleagues, a male signaller referred to by the tribunal as ‘RS’ said ‘how do you like your oral sex, giving or receiving?’.
In December 2016, another colleague ‘MB’ watched a porn video while on duty and exclaimed ‘there’s nothing like a bit of dwarf porn’ while his son was sat next to him.
After Christmas 2016, Ms Owens started noticing two of her colleagues, ‘AF’ and ‘MB’, walk behind her while she was working and deliberately burp loudly as they walked past.
Around this time ‘WC’ sat next to Ms Owens and deliberately burped loudly and continuously for in excess of 15 minutes until she eventually had to ask him if he was OK.
For many weeks after this, several male colleagues would burp during a shift with her and loudly say ‘excuse me’.
The tribunal heard that, throughout her time working at Network Rail, her male colleagues made ‘deliberate and gratuitous use of the word c***’ around her ‘on practically every shift’ she worked.
Network Rail admitted ‘in such an environment foul language is sometimes used’, but did not condone this.
Male colleagues left newspapers open in the kitchen with pictures of naked women inside them on show. Ms Owens said if she closed the paper, when she returned to the kitchen it would be open on the same page again.
She also complained of how ‘RS’ looked at almost naked women ‘with just two thin lines over their private parts’ on a work computer.
Regarding these kinds of incidents, Network Rail said it ‘did not condone any sort of pornographic material in the workplace and all employees have been trained in diversity and inclusion’.
‘MB’ once discussed rape scenes from movies for about 20 minutes with ‘DT’ and was ‘expressing pseudo concern’ while Ms Owens was the only woman in the room.
The tribunal heard Ms Owens complained about ‘BF’ coming back from the toilet and saying he had been ‘spanking the monkey’.
Not every incident complained about was overtly sexual.
Ms Owens also said, after a mistake had been made, she overheard a male co worker saying ‘this is what you get when you let women in the signal box’, before going on to mention something about ‘women’s hormones’.
Ms Owens sued for discrimination, and won her case on appeal after her employment tribunal was heard in Croydon (pictured) in 2024
At one point in her time at Network Rail, Ms Owens was told by ‘AF’ she should sit on another male employee’s lap ‘to pacify him’.
Ms Owens was referred to at one time as ‘the fat woman’, and the men she worked with would whistle a Laurel and Hardy tune or play the Antiques Roadshow theme song near her.
She also said female drivers were criticised differently to how male drivers were when they made a mistake.
On at least three occasions, she said she heard ‘PT’ say things like ‘do you think women should be in the workplace?’ and ‘I think women should be in the home’ while she was the only woman working.
The tribunal heard how this same worker, ‘PT’ also brought in a sex toy and showed people while looking at Ms Owens and smiling for about 15 minutes.
Ms Owens claimed she was excluded from takeaway orders when male colleagues ordered food and was not made a vegetarian option at a team meal even though she was asked specifically about it.
She submitted a grievance in November 2017, highlighting these concerns and others, but it was dismissed.
After launching a claim of sex discrimination at the employment tribunal, the panel ruled all 25 incidents she complained about in her grievance were sex discrimination.
Employment Judge Anne Martin ruled: ‘The Tribunal must consider whether [Network Rail] acted vexatiously, abusively,
disruptively or otherwise unreasonably in the conduct of the proceedings and whether its defence had reasonable prospect of success.
‘The Tribunal must consider the whole picture of what happened in the case and to ask whether there was unreasonable conduct in defending the case and in doing so, to identify the conduct, what was unreasonable about it and what effects it had.
‘There does not have to be a precise causal link between the unreasonable conduct in question and the specific costs being claimed.
‘The Tribunal considers that it was unreasonable conduct for [Network Rail] not to have conceded that allegations 1 – 25 took place. [Network Rail] had upheld [Ms Owens’] grievance.
‘The Tribunal consequently find that costs should be awarded in these circumstances and that the circumstances of this case are the exception rather than the norm.’
Initially in 2022 the panel ruled that although she had been the victim of sex discrimination Ms Owens had brought her case too late and her claims were dismissed.
However, she successfully appealed against that decision and when the case returned to the tribunal, Network Rail admitted liability and damages were awarded.
