In most organizations, nicknames are a result of an "incident" - often an amusing one. I have been called a few names in my time - some were insulting while others made me smile. Names or, more to the point, insults can hurt. My wife says she can still remember that in 1972 (serving as a policewoman) she was called a "sweet faced bastard". She still remembers how deeply it hurt because it was personal.

If recent cases are anything to go by, some people are going over the top. Clearly there has to be a limit, as the cases discussed will show. Men give nicknames whereas women rarely do. Take, as an example, the report of the army officer who is suing the Ministry of Defence and named officers for episodes of humiliating bullying during which he was allegedly called, "ten inch". Because other officers believed him to be a "virgin soldier", they felt this would make him more attractive to the opposite sex, but would it? Apparently almost everyone in the mess had a nickname: one officer was called "bed pan" and the doctor's wife "nurse whip".

It was reported in (1993)The Times, September 11, that a woman aged 19 claimed to have been so severely bullied at school that she attempted to commit suicide. She was suing her education authority because she said it had done nothing to prevent the attacks. The action, brought in the Court of Session (Scotland's highest civil court) was believed to be the first of its kind in Britain.

The woman, who did not wish to be named, was claiming Ł30,000 compensation from Lothian Regional Council. She alleged that staff at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, failed to protect her from the bullying campaign she had to endure. She said she was subjected to two degrading physical assaults of a sexual nature and was also nicknamed "thunderthighs" by the gang of girls and boys who terrorized her. The bullying became so bad she took a drug overdose. After she recovered from her suicide attempt, she was forced to leave the school and enrol elsewhere.

Another relevant case was discussed in (1994) The Times, September 21: an industrial tribunal in Glasgow was told how a woman business graduate ended up in a psychiatric hospital and seriously contemplated suicide because of a constant stream of sexual harassment. The woman, who worked as a financial consultant in Glasgow, told the hearing that she ended up in tears every day because of the taunts and sexual remarks made by her male colleagues. She said that after she had complained to a director because he had called her "darling" he started addressing her as "you old bag". Remarks were made about her appearance, underwear and what she had been doing the previous night. Male colleagues also asked her to go out to buy female condoms so that they could see what they looked like and altered her dental appointment card so that instead of reading "oral surgery" it read "oral sex". They wrote jokes such as, "Why did the woman cross the road? Who cares and, who let her out of the kitchen anyway." On a coach trip to a business appointment in London her male colleagues played a pornographic video and refused to let her switch it off. She said she felt totally humiliated and demeaned by their behaviour.

The very recent case of Insitu Cleaning v. Head [1995] IRLR 4 concerned a form of greeting. There are various ways of greeting a colleague, however Michael Brown, a manager in Insitu Cleaning Co. (who happened to be the son of one of its directors) decided to use the outstanding address of "Hiya, big tits".

The recipient of this distinctive remark was Mrs Doreen Head, Insitu's supervisor. She found this embarrassing, especially as this had happened whilst she was in a meeting and Michael Brown was nearly half her age. She complained to her employers. They made inquiries. The two people with Mrs Head had not heard the remark and if Michael Brown did say that, he would not admit it. Insitu came back to Mrs Head and said that if she wanted to pursue her complaint, she should invoke the grievance procedure and they would institute an investigation. Mrs Head resigned and claimed sexual harassment and constructive dismissal.

The matter came before Morison, J, sitting in the Employment Appeals Tribunal. The Industrial Tribunal below was satisfied that Michael Brown had, indeed, made that remark, but the questions remained: did that single act constitute sexual harassment, and was the way Insitu had handled the complaint sufficient to justify Mrs Head claiming constructive dismissal? Insitu argued that surely a single remark about a woman's cup size should be equated, in a man, to no more than ragging about his personal characteristics, like his beard or baldness? (this would indicate that the army mess nickname, if given on known facts would have gone too far). The EAT rejected this argument. No such analogy could be drawn. One remark was sex-related, the other was not. When her employer's son made a remark which caused her embarrassment, Mrs Head suffered a detriment. The remark had no place in the workplace and it was not perverse for the Industrial Tribunal to find that a single act was so serious as to be able to constitute sexual harassment. The reference in the EC Code of Practice to "unwanted conduct" did not allow for an argument that conduct could not be unwanted until it had been done and rejected. The greeting was an act of sexual harassment and her employers were vicariously liable for Michael Brown's acts. Insitu's insistence on following the grievance procedure was not, however, a breach of Mrs Head's contract of employment and, in the circumstances, did not justify a claim that Mrs Head had been constructively dismissed.

The EAT' s lay members set down a code of practice to avoid repetition. They suggested employers should adopt a separate procedure which deals exclusively with claims of sexual harassment. The complaint should be dealt with from the standpoint of the complainant. The complaint should be dealt with informally initially, so that matters could be dealt with sympathetically before they got out of hand, noting that many women are not concerned about having the offender disciplined, but simply in having the harassment stopped.

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