Tag: Race Discrimination

Categories
Anna Denton-Jones Bullying and Harassment Conflict Employment Law Harassment Sexual Harassment

Widening the law on harassment — It’s not all about sexual harassment

View of the City of London at sunset

Carozzi v University of Hertfordshire [2024] EAT169 related to a Brazilian national of Jewish ethnic origin who was working at the University and resigned during her probationary period, bringing a number of claims.

Amongst those claims, was a harassment claim on the ground of race. Her complaint arose out of comments around her accent which was very strong and made it difficult for her to be understood. These comments were found by the original Tribunal not to be harassment, on the basis that they were not motivated by race but were instead discussing her comprehensibility when communicating orally.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal overturned this finding, holding that looking for a motivation was wrong. Whilst treatment can be related to a protected characteristic where it is “because of” it, it can also occur where the alleged harasser is not motivated by the characteristic at all.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal noted that an accent can be an important part of somebody’s national or ethnic identity and criticising their accent could therefore be related to the protected characteristic of race, and violate that person’s dignity.

This case confirms the position that the test for being “related to” a protected characteristic can be satisfied by establishing an objective link between the conduct and characteristic, without the need for the conduct to be motivated by the characteristic. This makes it much wider than the “because of” or “reason why” test which applies in direct discrimination claims.

Employers need to train managers to make sure that they understand that picking somebody up on what might be a challenging accent to understand, is likely to get them into difficulty.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

Categories
Age Discrimination Anna Denton-Jones Disability Diversity Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010 Harassment HR Training

The requirement for diversity training

Royal Courts of Justice, London

As if everyone in HR and business is not under enough pressure at the moment, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT), in a case Allay (UK) Ltd v Gehlen has confirmed that it regards training provided 2 years ago on equality and diversity “stale” and ineffective. This was in the context of a racial harassment case. You will be familiar with the idea that in order for an employer to escape liability, if there, is to say that they as employer took all reasonable steps to prevent employees from committing the particular discriminatory act.

It has long been the case that employers present the Tribunal with the fact that the employee protagonist in any harassment case has undergone training and that they have policies of not tolerating such acts of harassment.

If you had asked me to guess how long it took training to become stale and ineffective, I might have said 4-5 years. It is really interesting that the EAT wasn’t going to allow the employer to rely on having given somebody training 2 years ago and suggests that employers are going to need to make some sort of refresher training an annual event. This will of course go for all forms of harassment, so every protected characteristic, not just that of race.

In this particular case, the EAT found that the need for a refresher on a regular basis was amplified by remarks made in the case and the failure of other colleagues to react to the harassment they had witnessed or that had been complained about, and showed the training wasn’t in anyone’s minds. The fact that the protagonist felt that what they had said was just banter was further evidence that the training given had faded from memory and the managers didn’t know what to do when they observed harassment or it was reported to them, suggested that training had also faded from their memories. The particular employer had actually provided further training to the protagonist after the incident so that proved that they also thought further training was necessary, thus the employer couldn’t escape liability.

Having seen a real shift as a result of the MeToo movement, attitudes towards sexual harassment in the workplace and a further big shift as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement means that there is a huge spotlight at the moment over conduct in the workplace and a real sea change in what is expected to be tolerated. It could be that as the generations move into the workforce who are more likely to refuse to accept old norms or tolerate what they see as inappropriate, we see a sea change but for now the employer needs to be driving the change and reinforcing the message whenever it can.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law