Ms A Wandzel v The Hut Group — 2021

The claimant, a Polish national, brought a direct race discrimination claim arising from events during her work at The Hut Group's Warrington distribution centre. The tribunal identified six pleaded complaints: allocation to tasks with harder targets, allocation to heavier work, colleagues taking her workstation when she went to the toilet, delay in receiving a permanent contract, an alleged instruction not to speak Polish, and a report to the agency for spending too long in the toilet. The tribunal applied section 13 of the Equality Act 2010, the comparator requirement in section 23(1), and the shifting burden of proof in section 136.

On the task-allocation complaints, the tribunal accepted that MyProtein work involved heavier lifting and was more tiring than Health and Beauty, but found that the KPI targets for those areas were not shown to be harder to achieve and that the claimant generally met her targets. It found that staff were moved frequently according to operational need and real-time order information, and that the claimant had not shown she was assigned to more difficult or more onerous work because she was Polish. Those claims were dismissed.

The tribunal also rejected the allegation that Polish-speaking was prohibited. It found on the balance of probabilities that Ms Neascu did not tell the claimant not to speak Polish and did not make the other alleged comments. On the workstation issue, the tribunal accepted that workstations were often taken over when workers left them, but found this happened to workers of all nationalities and that the managers were focusing on keeping the right number of trained staff in each area. It was not shown that Romanian workers were allowed to take the claimant's place because of her race.

As to the permanent contract complaint, the tribunal found there was no statistical evidence showing how Romanian agency workers were treated compared with the claimant. It accepted the respondent's explanation that permanent contracts were limited and were allocated by reference to KPIs, attendance, attitude, behaviour and conduct. On the July 2019 toilet report, the tribunal accepted the claimant had been reported to the agency supervisor, but found this formed part of the normal inactivity reporting process and was not shown to be race-related. All race discrimination claims were dismissed.