A white accountancy executive has won more than £40,000 in compensation after she was sacked for accusing her Indian manager of race discrimination.
Nicola Blackwell began working for Smart Tax and Accountancy as a payroll executive, mostly remotely, from August 2021.
She told the tribunal that the following month, her manager Varsha Kapoor and another colleague had been shutting her out of Microsoft Teams calls.
She was told in October that she had passed her probation by another manager, Ashwin Juneja, who had hired her in the first place.
Employment tribunals
‘Siren’ who asked colleague to do her work loses tribunal claim
She told Juneja that she was not happy about Kapoor’s manner, although at the time she did not know that Kapoor was Juneja’s mother. Soon after this call her relationship with Kapoor further deteriorated.
On one occasion an employee was mistakenly paid twice, an error that could only have been made by Kapoor.
However, Blackwell overheard Kapoor tell a client that the mistake was made “by a member of the payroll team”, inferring that she was blaming others for her mistake.
Blackwell made an informal complaint to the company’s director that she felt Kapoor’s treatment of her was race-related. In a grievance meeting in December, Juneja told her that “racial discrimination is an extremely bold statement to make”.
The meeting found that there was “nothing of any concern” in her complaints, and Blackwell was told she had wasted “a lot of [Juneja’s] time”.
From January 2022, the tribunal heard, her workload began to increase and she was often kicked out of calls due to the way the system operated.
Blackwell’s relationship with Kapoor came under further strain, and this was exacerbated by the fact she was Juneja’s mother, she told the tribunal. She began recording Teams calls but Kapoor became cautious about discussing any issues for fears this “could be used against her”.
She submitted a formal grievance in February but this was dismissed. She was then asked to a formal disciplinary meeting and was dismissed for “lack of due care and attention” to her work in April 2022.
In his judgment, employment judge Callum Cowx said that although Blackwell was treated less favourably than her colleagues, “this treatment was not because of her being White British”.
But Judge Cowx did rule that she had been subjected to victimisation.
“The motivation behind [her] dismissal was the personality clash between herself and [Ms Kapoor], and the complaints made by [Ms Blackwell] about [Ms Kapoor].
“In a small family-run business it was inevitable that [her] position would become precarious, if not untenable, once she had made accusations of the kind she did against [Ms Kapoor].”
He added: ”It was not coincidental that the dismissal process was initiated only two days after [she] was informed her grievance appeal had failed.
“Once [she] had exhausted her appeal rights, and the complaint against [Ms Kapoor] had been finally dismissed, the [firm] was at liberty to initiate the process to end [her] employment, and the motivation for doing so was because she had made the complaints against [her manager].”
‘
The tribunal awarded Blackwell £12,000 for injury to feelings and £16,146 for financial loss. The award attracted a 20% uplift for her employer’s “unreasonable failure” to follow the Acas code of practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures.
The award for injury to feelings was increased to £14,400 and the award for financial loss increased to £19,375.57, and with interest her total compensation came to £41,181.58.
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
Employee relations opportunities on Personnel Today
Browse more Employee Relations jobs
