A former employee of New York City event company Eventique is suing his former employer, saying he was discriminated against after his boss learned he was gay, and his pay was cut by half to match “other females in the office.”
NBC News reports: “Eventique attempted to alienate and degrade Wesley Wernecke after CEO Henry Liron David learned he was gay, said Wernecke's lawyer, Anthony Consiglio. … Wernecke had just begun to work for Eventique, which stages events for high-profile clients, such as Nike, Twitter and Amazon, when David began to push him out of his role, the complaint filed Wednesday in the Manhattan Supreme Court states.”
Wernecke faced numerous instances of humiliation and discrimination according to the lawsuit, until he was eventually fired because “David simply could not bear the thought that Eventique would continue to be represented by a gay man.” Workers mocked him for his “girly” engagement ring, he was specifically excluded by his boss from a male bonding ritual with his employees involving a fist bump, he was excluded from “company lunches and frequent after-work drinks with ‘the fellas' in his office” and his pay was cut from $145K to $58K.
David reportedly told Wernecke: “I couldn't sleep at night thinking that you were being paid so much more than the other females in the office.”
