Failure to enrol employee on training course and a requirement to work eery weekend leads to ET claim
The Claimant, who describes himself as Black African, successfully brought a claim in the Employment Tribunal of unlawful direct race discrimination. The claim arose from the Respondent’s failure to enrol him on a course that would have developed him professionally, and the fact that the Respondent required him to work every weekend.
The ET found that the failure of the employer to take any steps to enrol the claimant onto the courses and the requirement to work every weekend was not aligned with a peers of a different race and constituted unlawful direct race discrimination.
The Claimant awarded compensation by the ET for injury to feelings, but the Claimant appealed on the grounds of the ET’s failure to award interest on the compensation, and the placing of the compensation award in the lower, rather than the middle, of the three bands in the Vento guidelines.
The EAT held that the ET had erred in law in failing to award interest to the Claimant, since it was required to consider interest whether or not an application had been made by a party; however, there was no error of law in the ET’s decision to place the compensation award at the top of the lower Vento band, as it had correctly focused on the actual injury suffered by the Claimant and not the gravity of the acts of the Respondent.
Overall, the claimant was successful in his appeal on the issue of interest but failed when it came to his injury to feelings award being moved from the lowest band in Vento. Therefore, the claimant overall received compensation of £12,757.
Full judgement available here