LONDON: A British woman who was asked by her employer to wear a badge featuring the Kuwaiti flag, to signal that she speaks Arabic, had her claim of racial discrimination rejected by an employment tribunal on Friday.
UK citizen Dana El-Farra, 22, brought the case against security company Securitas after bosses requested she wear the badge while greeting visitors to the National Gallery in London. She told her employer her parents are from Kuwait but she holds only British citizenship.
The tribunal ruled that the request was not racist and that other comments that were made did not create a “humiliating or offensive environment for her.”
Securitas is contracted by the National Gallery, an art museum that is a very popular tourist attraction in the British capital, to supply staff to perform duties such as greeting visitors and provide security. The request to wear the badge was made in an email. It said that the purpose was to “identify your mother tongue with the appropriate flag,” but that it was not mandatory, the tribunal heard.
El-Farra refused, saying she would only wear the British flag and not “a flag which reflected a country she had never been a national of,” the tribunal was told.
In addition to her complaint about the badge, she said that colleagues treated her worse than European co-workers, and that senior colleagues made comments she described as “racial microaggressions.”
In one case, she said that after she placed her belongings on a bench beside her, her manager asked: “What is this you are opening here, a market?” This, she said, reflected a “stereotype” of Arab culture. The tribunal rejected her claim.
In another incident, a different manager emailed El-Farra and an Algerian colleague to ask: “What is your native country?” She also believed she was treated less fairly than non-Arab colleagues when she requested flexible working.
El-Farra began working for Securitas as a visitor engagement assistant in March 2018. She quit the job in November 2019 and informed the company that she intended to take her grievances to an employment tribunal.
Dismissing the claims of racial discrimination and harassment, Employment Judge Frances Spencer said: “Ms. El-Farra was sensitive about questions relating to her ethnicity. That is not a criticism. She is British and such questions can, indeed, be offensive.
“However, these questions need to be looked at in the context of Securitas’ workplace, where employees were drawn from all over the world, and may be regarded as attempts to get to know each other.
“We find that, whether taken individually or together, and in the context of Securitas’ workplace, these comments do not meet the threshold where they can be said to have violated her dignity, or to have created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for her.”
