Mr Eddison Chidzvondo v Amazon UK Services Limited — 2022

The claimant, who described his race as Black British and of African origin, brought complaints of direct race discrimination and harassment related to race arising from an incident on 10 February 2021 at the respondent's LTN4 Dunstable site. The tribunal first considered whether he was a contract worker for the purposes of s41 Equality Act 2010. On the evidence, it found he was not employed by the respondent, Team Prevent, or Nevile Unique Care Ltd for the relevant statutory purposes, and therefore the tribunal did not have jurisdiction to hear the claim.

In case it was wrong on jurisdiction, the tribunal went on to determine the complaints on their merits. It preferred Mr Zychla's evidence about the incident, finding that the claimant had asked for a 30 minute break, was offered a short refreshment break, refused to continue his shift without the longer break, and was then asked to leave the site. It found that Mr Zychla did not shout or rant, did not repeatedly say "Amazon UK", and did not refuse a short break.

The tribunal found that the claimant had not shown a prima facie case on the first three direct discrimination allegations and that a hypothetical comparator who was not of the claimant's race would not have been treated differently in being asked to leave after refusing to continue work. For harassment, it found that the refusal of a 30 minute break and the instruction to leave were unwanted as perceived by the claimant, but were not related to race. The complaints were dismissed.