Transsexual freight haulage driver claims unfair treatment
Date: 24 January 2008
A transsexual freight haulage truck driver is seeking compensation, claiming that she was forced out of her job when she began dressing as a woman.
Vikki-Marie Gaynor, previously Mike, claimed that her bosses at road haulage firm Exel Europe treated her unfairly after colleagues began taunting her when she began wearing make-up and jewellery to work.
"I was very apprehensive about what people would think and my fears were realised when a fellow driver started muttering 'queer' and covered his backside with his hands," she told an employment tribunal.
As Mike, he was a soldier and was married twice. He obtained his freight haulage HGV licence when he was with the Royal Corps of Transport as a teenager. However, he had been dressing as a woman in secret for many years, and decided to live as a woman full-time in February last year.
Now she is claiming sexual discrimination from both Exel Europe and the Blue Arrow recruitment agency that found her the freight haulage job. She claims Blue Arrow failed to act on her complaints.
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