Ms Ravinder Cheema v Workers Educational Association Ltd — 2019

Ms Ravinder Cheema worked for Workers Educational Association Ltd as an Education Coordinator from 11 June 2018 and resigned on 23 November 2020. The tribunal found that the relationship with her line manager, Sabina Trowbridge, was strained and that some of the claimant’s complaints reflected genuine performance and workload concerns rather than discrimination. It also found that the respondent failed to give clear formal confirmation of the claimant’s move to a 0.5 FTE arrangement from 1 August 2019, which the tribunal described as a failure to confirm the obvious about the terms of employment.

On the constructive dismissal issue, the tribunal held that the lack of clarity about whether the claimant was in a true job share amounted to a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence around August 2019. However, it found that the claimant affirmed that breach because by September 2019 the practical position was clear and she chose to remain in employment for over a year. The tribunal also found that later matters, including Ms Trowbridge’s occasional failure to answer calls and Ms June Diegan’s conduct at the 3 February 2020 meeting, did not amount to a further fundamental breach or a last straw. As a result, the claimant was not dismissed and the unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal claims were dismissed.

The tribunal’s race discrimination findings were also adverse to the claimant. It held that the treatment it found proved was not because of race, that the claimant was treated in the same way as her white colleague Joe Carter on the job-share issue, and that there were no facts from which race discrimination could properly be inferred. It therefore dismissed the direct discrimination claim. Applying the section 26 EqA test, the tribunal accepted that some conduct was unwanted but held that it was not related to race, so the harassment claim was dismissed as well. No monetary award was made.