Scottish butcher’s ‘race’ discrimination claim gets the chop

Friday 29 June 2018

A Scottish butcher who claimed that he had been bullied so badly by colleagues over his weight, tattoos, race and ringtone that he had to leave his job, has had his racial discrimination claim struck out after a Tribunal concluded that the allegations weren’t true.

Garry Smith told the Employment and Discrimination Tribunal in February that he had been discriminated against on the basis of his nationality whilst working in The Country Butcher at Rondel’s Farm Shop.

His employers rejected the accusation, hitting back with a counter-allegation that he was only bringing the claim to win money to be ploughed into his wife’s bar venture in Thailand – and had falsified evidence to prove his case.

After six years of working at the shop from June 2011 to June 2017, Mr Smith decided to hand in his resignation.

Pictured: The butcher argued that his Scottish accent made him the subject of discrimination at work.

According to evidence provided to the Tribunal, he made the decision after enduring years of “derogatory remarks” from his colleagues on topics ranging from “his weight, his Scottish accent, his tattoos, his short haircut, the ringtone on his telephone” to jokes over his wife’s nationality. 

He told the panel, presided by Advocate Mike Preston, who sat with Anne Southern and Emma Harper, that this had caused him, “...a huge amount of stress and affected both his health and personal life.”

Mr Smith added that he had made both verbal complaints and written to his employer on a number of occasions, but that nothing was ever done. “The final straw,” he said, came in June 2017, when a colleague “belittled” him in front of a customer. “The Claimant could bear it no more and he decided to resign,” the Tribunal noted. 

He provided copies of those letters to the panel, but the employer denied that they were ever received. In fact, they said that the first time they had seen them was during the final tribunal hearing, suggesting that he had fabricated the letters shortly before then to “bolster” his argument. 

Pictured: Mr Smith's former employer, The Country Butcher, is located in Rondel's Farm Shop.

Although he denied this, it was pointed out to him that the dates in one of the letters didn’t add up.

“…The first letter of complaint was dated 16 June 2014 and referred to an incident on Wednesday 15 June 2014, that is the day before. In fact, 16 June 2014 was a Monday and so the day before was a Sunday. It was according to the Respondents, to say the least surprising that a person writing a letter about an incident that took place yesterday would get the day wrong. The Tribunal had considerable sympathy with that view,” Advocate Preston observed.

Country Butchers, however, painted a different picture of the workplace. They described it as a “happy ship” where there was plenty of “friendly banter”, but nothing malicious. They added that Mr Smith would often bring them back gifts from holiday, which they said “was not indicative of an employee who had been subjected to a campaign of bullying on a daily basis.”

Questions were also raised over the motivation behind his discrimination complaint. Mr Smith was said to have interest in a bar in Thailand owned by his wife, “and wanted to bring a spurious claim so as to raise money to assist in that venture.” This was denied by Mr Smith.

Branding Mr Smith an “unsatisfactory witness”, the Panel refused to support his allegations. 

In a judgement published yesterday, Advocate Preston explained: “…The Tribunal finds that the Claimant was not subjected to the “treatment” that he alleged so that there was no breach of contract, fundamental or otherwise that justified his resignation. In addition, the Tribunal finds as a matter of fact that the Claimant did not send written complaints or make any verbal complaints regarding his “treatment” by the Second Respondent to the Respondents. Further, the Claimant was not discriminated against by the Respondents in the manner alleged or at all. 

“As a consequence of the above findings, the Tribunal dismisses the Claimants claim that he was constructively unfairly dismissed by the First Respondent and that he was discriminated against on the grounds of his race by either of the Respondents. 

“The Claims having failed, they are dismissed and no award of compensation is made.”