A former Goldman Sachs employee who was fired after returning from paternity leave has won his sexual discrimination case.
Jon Reeves, who had been working for the firm since 2007, was told “you’re a grown man, you can sort this out” when he raised concerns with his bosses about struggling to manage his work-life balance.
He was dismissed from his role as vice president in the firm’s compliance department in London after returning from six months of paternity leave in 2022.
At a central London tribunal, he claimed the firm disapproved of male staff taking extended leave for childcare reasons.
He told the hearing: “What happened to me would not happen to a woman at Goldman Sachs, 100%.”
However, the bank argued he was dismissed because of longstanding performance issues.
Reeves, who held positions at the financial institution in the US and Australia before relocating to the UK in 2013, had his first child in 2019.
The tribunal heard that on one particular occasion, he and his family were travelling to Cornwall for their first holiday together when an urgent matter arose and the bank’s senior employees were required to help deal with it. Reeves missed an email from a colleague as he had been driving and, following the incident, the matter was repeatedly raised as a performance issue.
He told his bosses that he intended to take six months of paternity leave following the birth of his second child, from November 2021 to May 2022, and his name was put forward for redundancy in March 2022.
Just before the end of his paternity leave, Reeves was placed at risk of redundancy and then on gardening leave before his dismissal in September 2022.
Ruling in favour of Reeves, the tribunal found no attempt had been made to ensure a fair process was carried out before he was dismissed because of his sex.
Commenting on the verdict, Goldmach Sachs said in a statement: “The firm is deeply committed to supporting working parents, with hundreds of Goldman Sachs fathers having taken up our 26 weeks of paid parental leave since it was introduced in 2019. We are carefully reviewing the judgment and the reasoning supporting its findings.”
The payout amount will be determined at a remedy hearing next year.
