Ms I Andreescu v Samworth Brothers Limited t/a SBSC — 2021

The claimant worked for the respondent through an agency as a warehouse operative from October 2019 until her assignment was terminated with effect from 29 August 2020. She brought claims that the termination was because of her sex and/or race, and the tribunal considered the respondent's application to strike those claims out or, alternatively, to order a deposit. The tribunal noted that the claimant's race allegation was based on her nationality; she was a Romanian national.

The respondent's case was that the assignment ended because the claimant had breached strict hygiene and Covid-19 rules. An email sent to the agency on 30 August 2020 said there had been an incident involving use of the ladies' toilets without following the Covid-19 guidelines, that the claimant had been told this was a serious health and safety breach, and that she could no longer work at SBSC. The tribunal also noted that the claimant's text messages to the agency after the termination did not refer to sex or race discrimination.

Applying the direct discrimination framework under section 13 Equality Act 2010 and the burden of proof under section 136, the tribunal found that the claimant had not put forward facts from which discrimination could be inferred. It accepted that the respondent employed male and female agency workers, and British and non-British workers, and that it had terminated the assignments of male and British agency workers as well. The claimant's case was that the witness relied on by the respondent was mistaken or lying, but the tribunal held that this went to the fairness of the termination rather than to sex or race discrimination.

The tribunal concluded that the discrimination allegations arose because the claimant could not bring an unfair dismissal claim and had then sought to characterise what happened as discrimination after speaking to ACAS. It held that there was nothing in the contemporaneous documents or in the claimant's evidence to show any real prospect of shifting the burden of proof to the respondent. For those reasons, both the sex discrimination claim and the race discrimination claim were struck out as having no reasonable prospect of success.