Tuesday, June 26, 2001

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Firm pays £500,000 for ordering Jew to dress as Hitler

BY STEVE BIRD

A JEWISH City trader who was ordered to wear an Adolf Hitler uniform as a joke punishment for being late for work won substantial damages yesterday after claiming racial discrimination. Laurent Weinberger, whose grandmother died in Auschwitz, received an estimated £500,000 from the international money broker Tullett & Tokyo Liberty on the eve of an employment tribunal hearing.

Mr Weinberger, 33, of Northwood, northwest London, said that after refusing to wear the costume he had been moved from his department and told to take a pay cut. Two weeks later he resigned. He said yesterday: "I am pleased with the outcome."

A spokesman for Tullett & Tokyo, which denied unfair dismissal and racial discrimination, said: "This claim focuses on a regrettable incident for which the employer quickly apologised. We are pleased that a mutually satisfactory end has been reached." Both parties refused to reveal the exact terms of the settlement.

A preliminary hearing held earlier this year heard that Mr Weinberger was called "Jew Boy" and "Yiddo" by one of his bosses. He also claimed that he was told he should make up for lost time when he took Jewish holidays.

Makbool Javaid, the employment lawyer who represented Mr Weinberger, said that the costume incident was "like handing a Ku Klux Klan uniform to a black person and saying: Wear that."

The Hitler trousers, shirt, jacket, cap, boots, and tie were hired in Mr Weinberger's name and paid for by Tullett & Tokyo. Brokers would also place a skull cap on top of the television when a Jew appeared on financial bulletins.

In separate incidents, a Welsh trader was made to wear a Bo Peep costume because of his country's association with sheep, and a Northern Irish Protestant was given a Pope costume.

The firm said that Mr Weinberger, who worked there for six years, had joined in the "banter", calling some colleagues a "fat Scot" or "yoks" if they were not Jewish. It claimed that such language was "horseplay".