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In Royal Bank of Scotland plc v Morris UKEAT/0436/10, a
black employee complained about his manager, Mr Tigue's
conduct. The employee met initially with Mr Tigue's manager, Mr
Arnett, who wrongly assumed and suggested that the employee had
been alleging his manager's conduct was connected with race.
The employee denied this and resented the suggestion that he was
"playing the race card".
This, together with other factors relating to the manner in
which his grievance was handled led to the employee resigning and
bringing a number of claims, including a claim for direct race
discrimination in relation to the comments made by Mr Arnett. This
comment was found to be direct race discrimination by the tribunal
and the EAT have now upheld this decision. The EAT accepted that
this was not one of the most serious acts of discrimination but
commented that it demonstrated "an almost certainly
unconscious racial stereotype of a rather subtle kind". The
EAT commented that in most cases it would expect incidents of this
kind to be dealt with by an informal apology or through the
employer's grievance procedure but in this case, the overly
formalistic approach taken in relation to the grievance procedure
had got in the way of a more "humane and straightforward
resolution".
Comment: While it is legitimate to clarify if
an employee might be alleging racial discrimination if there is
anything in the circumstances which suggests this may be an issue,
employers and managers should be careful not to assume that is the
case simply because the employee bringing the complaint is of a
different race, religion etc. as this case demonstrates that this
can be found to be direct discrimination.
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