According to an employment tribunal that ordered the tax office pay PS25,000 in damages for hurt feelings, sending a birthday card was ‘unwanted behavior’ and amounted to harassment.
Ms Toure started working as a Customer Service Consultant for HMRC in 2019. Her claims at tribunal included over 20 allegations of discrimination, victimisation, and race and disability harassment.
Toure said that in October 2019, she attended a course on handling telephone inquiries.
A colleague responded to a question by saying “pronunciation” and “accent”, pointing at Toure, a Frenchman of African descent.
Later, the same colleague made a comment regarding a Nigerian co-worker and friend of Toure’s. This was dismissed as “banter”.
Another incident was the allegation made by a colleague that she had recorded Toure as she entered the lift to leave for the day.
Toure, who is Muslim, was asked by another manager why she wore the headscarf. She replied that it was religious.
The manager said in a disapproving tone that her daughter wore a head scarf and that she didn’t know why. She added that Toure was probably jealous of her colleagues because she is a beautiful Black woman.
Toure started working from home during the pandemic. She claimed that she was having difficulty claiming her utility costs from HMRC. A few months later she emailed to tell her manager she had been treated unfairly “mostly due to my foreign accent and ethnicity”.
She told the court that stress had exacerbated the pituitary tumour.
Toure had just signed off when the incident with the birthday card occurred. She requested that she only receive essential correspondence, and then by email.
Her manager said to the tribunal that she was on a list with all the team members and that they would send cards from the team when it was a special day. Toure asked her manager to remove her from the list of team members’ birthdays.
She told the tribunal, however, that in 2021 she received 11 emails asking if she was okay and a birthday greeting. A new manager had been hired by this point, and he was not informed of her request to remove herself from the list.
In judgement the tribunal determined that repeatedly contacting the woman during her sick leave was an “unwanted act”, just as the comments made about the headscarf at the previous meeting were.
The Judge Leith noted that the environment in which she was placed had been hostile and intimidating.
In ten of her claims, she was successful. In its remedy judgement the employment tribunal ordered HMRC pay the Claimant a sum of PS25252, which included PS20,000 for injury to feelings plus interest. Toure’s requests for a cost order and a time preparation order were denied.
This article originally appeared on 28 June 2024. It was updated after the publication of the remedy judgment.
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