The Employment Appeal Tribunal in England and Wales has found that an instruction to not speak Russian in the workplace was not discriminatory in the circumstances. The employers are an animal testing laboratory which had previously made it the subject of attention from animal rights activists, including violent assaults on its employees. Given their history and the claimant's 'unusual' behaviour, the instruction was not unreasonable.
The EAT concluded that the employment tribunal had found that (i) the same instruction had been given to the Claimant’s named comparators (even if not actually passed on) and (ii) would have been given to “some other employee speaking some language other than English in circumstances that gave [the employer] cause for concern”.
The ET had thus reached permissible conclusions on the case whether take to be one of actual comparison (as put by the Claimant) or on the basis of a correctly constructed hypothetical comparator.
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