Asda loses race discrimination case

Asda has been forced to pay £27,750 in compensation to 37 Asian workers for racial discrimination.

A manager at the supermarket’s branch in Lutterworth, Leicestershire ordered the employees to produce documents to prove they had the right to work in Britain in an attempt to ensure the company was not employing illegal immigrants. Some of them had been with the company for 18 years.

The manager called out their “foreign-sounding names” over a public address system, The Independent reported.

The company has agreed to pay each of them £750, but the GMB general union accused management of failing to offer the full public apology they had been promised.

The supermarket giant was ordered to pay £850,000 to 340 trade union workers earlier this month after a tribunal in Newcastle-upon-Tyne found that the company had illegally offered an inducement to give up the collective agreement negotiated by their union.