Dr E McGaughey (FRU Representative) For the First v Mr N Doherty (assisted by Mr S McQueen) For the Second Respondent: in person — 2020

This was a remitted hearing in a case about three Polish claimants employed at the Maritime Hotel in Portland. The 2017 tribunal had already upheld their holiday-pay claims, unauthorised deduction of wages claims, breach of contract/wrongful dismissal claims, and automatically unfair dismissal claims under section 104 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, while dismissing race discrimination. The Employment Appeal Tribunal remitted the race issue and the second claimant's section 38 award.

On remittal, the tribunal re-affirmed the earlier factual findings that the respondents had recruited Polish workers and had not made derogatory remarks before 7 July 2016. It found that the decision to dismiss was not because of race: the claimants had been challenging late and incomplete wage payments and the lack of written particulars, and Mr Doherty's reaction was to their continuing complaints and assertion of statutory rights.

The tribunal found direct race discrimination only in the manner in which the dismissals were communicated. After the dismissals, Mr Doherty told the second claimant to 'fuck off back to Poland', mimicked the third claimant's Polish accent, and said the claimants only understood English when it suited them. Those comments were held to be because of Polish nationality; the requirement to leave the hotel accommodation the following morning was not treated as discriminatory.

The second claimant was awarded four weeks' pay under section 38 of the Employment Act 2002, calculated from agreed gross weekly pay of £318.60, producing £1,274.40. The first and third claimants had already received equivalent section 38 awards in 2017. The tribunal also ordered compensation for unauthorised deduction of wages of £885.30, £929.35 and £1,115.37 gross. It upheld the automatically unfair dismissal awards and, because none of the claimants had sufficient service for a basic award, made no basic award.

For unfair dismissal, the tribunal accepted one year's loss calculations, held that the ACAS Code of Practice had been unreasonably breached, and applied the maximum 25% uplift under section 207A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. The compensatory awards were £12,678.96, £12,389.33 and £7,984.95, and the tribunal said no separate damages were required for breach of contract because the notice loss was already covered by the compensatory award.

For direct race discrimination, the tribunal awarded £2,000 each for injury to feelings, plus interest of £554.52 each. It placed the awards toward the bottom of the lower Vento band, refused exemplary damages, and said there was no proper basis for punitive relief. The earlier holiday-pay award remained confirmed but was not re-quantified in the remitted reasons.