A former worker with insurance firm AXA PPP Healthcare has won over £140,000 in damages after an employment tribunal found that the firm had been guilty of racial discrimination, unfair dismissal and personal injury.
Licia Faithful, who is Brazilian, worked at the firm for 18 months but told the tribunal that she became an emotional wreck during that time. She said that colleagues mocked her accent, taping it and playing it back to her, they stole Brazilian flags from her desk and a manager stopped her from wearing a top with the Brazilian national logo on it. She also described a works outing on a coach when a colleague stood up and spoke about “bloody foreigners”, when she was the only foreign national on the bus.
Judge Gill Sage, at Ashford Employment Tribunal in Kent, said that managers at AXA were responsible for four breaches of employment law and said that Mrs Faithful had been forced to endure “the most serious case of discrimination”. She said that there had been a failure at all levels of the company to protect the worker. The judge also criticised managers for putting Mrs Faithful through a “demeaning grievance procedure” when she complained about the abuse.