Ms D Sachdev (relative) For the v Respondent — 2021

The claimant worked for the respondent from 3 June 2019 until her dismissal under the probationary procedure on 28 November 2019. She brought claims of direct race discrimination, harassment related to race and victimisation arising from the way Ms Edwards managed her probation, the dismissal process, and the later grievance and appeal. The tribunal held that the allegations spanning the employment relationship formed conduct extending over a period, so it had jurisdiction to consider the pre-17 October 2019 matters under section 123(3)(a) Equality Act 2010.

On the direct race discrimination claim, the tribunal accepted that the claimant and Ms Edwards had a difficult working relationship and that the probation process was not handled well in every respect. It found, however, that Ms Edwards was not aware that the claimant was specifically of Indian origin, only that her ethnic origins were from the South Asian subcontinent, and it concluded that there was no evidential basis to infer that race was an effective reason for the treatment complained of. The tribunal found that some differences in how the claimant was managed, including meeting scheduling and the handling of probation reviews, were explained by working patterns and by Ms Edwards' view that the claimant was more challenging to manage. It also said that the claimant's conduct was not sufficiently poor, viewed objectively, to justify termination, but that this did not show race discrimination.

The tribunal also rejected the harassment allegations. It found that the incidents relied on were either not proved as alleged, not linked to race, or insufficiently serious to meet the section 26 threshold. It recorded that Ms Edwards could be rude and abrupt, but found that she did not act deliberately to upset the claimant and that, in several instances, the claimant had over-reacted or had become hyper-sensitive in the course of a deteriorating working relationship. The tribunal therefore concluded that the conduct did not create the kind of intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment required by the Equality Act.

The victimisation claim failed because the tribunal did not treat the claimant's 1 October 2019 complaint or 26 November 2019 grievance as protected acts. Although those documents used words such as 'humiliating', 'intimidating' and 'unfair treatment', the tribunal held that they did not suggest an allegation that the treatment was linked to race or any other Equality Act breach. It therefore dismissed all victimisation allegations. The tribunal noted that Mr Cauthery partially upheld the grievance and recommended management training, but that did not alter the dismissal of the statutory claims. It also made procedural criticisms, including that it would have been fairer to postpone the formal probation meeting pending the grievance and that the appeal manager interpreted her role too narrowly, but it found those matters were not motivated by race.