Miss C Ramos Da Silva v Hard Rock Cafe UK Limited — 2025

The claimant, Miss C Ramos Da Silva, had two periods of employment with Hard Rock Cafe UK Limited: July to December 2022 and 2 August 2023 to 2 May 2024. Her ET1 ticked unfair dismissal only, but she later sought to amend the claim to add race and then sex discrimination and harassment related to race and/or sex. At the hearing she accepted she could not pursue disability discrimination.

Applying Selkent Bus Co Limited v Moore and taking account of MacFarlane and Dethling, the tribunal accepted that the claimant had been treated badly in some respects and that comments and conduct showed poor treatment; it said she may well have been bullied at work. However, it refused the amendment. The 2022 allegations were held to be out of time, there was a five-month break in employment so no continuing act across the gap, and the claimant later accepted the second-period allegations were not race-based.

On the sex discrimination analysis, the tribunal found the claimant could not show less favourable treatment by reference to a male comparator. It noted her own evidence that some men were treated badly and some women were treated well, and that the main factor appeared to be who got on with managers rather than sex. The tribunal therefore treated the proposed discrimination and harassment claims as having no legal merit. The respondent's strike-out application on unfair dismissal succeeded because the claimant accepted she had less than two years' service, so the tribunal had no jurisdiction to hear that claim.