American gay employee received less salary, “just like the other females in office"

A former employee of an event company in New York claims to have been fired because of his sexual orientation. His employer allegedly halved his salary, because he made a lot more than “the other females in office’’, NBC news reports.
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Wesley Wernecke was hired by the New York-based event company Eventique, “and once the employer learned he was gay, he began shutting him out of the business”, says Wernecke’s lawyer. The former employee quit his job to work at Eventique. The company organises events for other companies such as Twitter, Nike and Amazon. A week after Wernecke was hired, his co-workers asked if his wife also had such a “girly” engagement ring as well. He then answered that his partner, Evan, indeed had a similar one.

Wernecke was allegedly excluded from company activities while tasks were given to other colleagues. When he was invited in the office of his employer, Wernecke was told that his salary would be cut from 145,000 to 70,000 dollars. He was told: “I couldn't sleep at night thinking that you were being paid so much more than the other females in the office,”. According to Wernecke, the entire situation forced him to start seeing a psychiatrist for the first time in his life.

According to the filed discrimination complaint, the thought of a homosexual man representing the company would have been unbearable for his employer. The employer’s attorney however calls the allegations ‘shocking’ and ‘baseless’.

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