A joiner has denied carrying out a mock crucifixion with his “team” as part of a bullying culture on building sites.

Site supervisor Andrew Addison, 31, claimed the incident and various other actions involving a 17-year-old apprentice joiner were pranks or jokes during which the teenager had laughed and joked.

He claimed the apprentice, who is a practising Catholic, had been willing to be tied to a chair and carried out into the street, had voluntarily put a dummy into his mouth and had posed for a picture with it, and had not objected when he was taped to a cross-shaped plasterboard with his arms outstretched.

“It was never against his will. People get tied up all the time on building sites,” alleged Addison. “There was no bullying. It was the lads just playing pranks on each other.”

Addison, 31, of Westbourne Road, Selby, Christopher Jackson, 21, of Acorn Close, Barlby, and site manager Alex Puchir, 37, of Glenallan Drive, Edinburgh, all deny a charge of religiously aggravated assault.

Joseph Richard Rose, 21, of Main Street, Bubwith, and Addison both deny a charge of putting the apprentice in fear of violence by harassment and Addison denies a separate charge of assault.

Giving evidence at York Crown Court, Addison said he was the line manager for about five joiners including the apprentice, who worked for Direct Interior Solutions on outfitting buildings including hospitals, shops and a Lloyds TSB bank in York. He called them his “team”. Puchir worked for a different company.

He alleged he saw Puchir taping the apprentice to the cross while Jackson held his legs, and he held one arm before it was taped. He and Jackson then tried to raise the cross to vertical but only managed it for a couple of seconds before they had to put it down. He denied fixing it to a wall so that the apprentice was suspended a metre above the ground, as the 17-year-old has alleged.

He denied the incident was religiously motivated and that it was aimed at humiliating the apprentice who claims he didn’t want to work on Sundays because he wanted to go to church instead.

In a separate incident while working at the bank with the apprentice, they found about £1,000 in cash which was handed over to the bank staff, the jury have heard.

Addison denied that the apprentice had objected when he suggested they split it half and half and not hand it in. He also denied that the apprentice's objection had led to him being tied to a chair, gagged with the dummy and blindfolded before being carried into the street and then shut into a cupboard.

The joiner alleged he had been coming downstairs when he saw others in the team carrying the apprentice tied to the chair outside and had untied him when they put him in the cupboard.

He claimed his Facebook post “Selby is a small place, you know who you are” which he made after the apprentice and his mother met with his boss was about unauthorised use of a works van and not a threat to the apprentice.

The trial continues.