A white accounting executive who was excluded from meetings by her Indian boss has won £40k in compensation after claiming she was discriminated against.
Nicola Blackwell alleged that Varsha Kapoor had targeted her by not including her in Microsoft Teams meetings and by speaking about her to a colleague in Hindi, a tribunal heard.
She has now been awarded £41,000 in compensation after an employment judge ruled she lost her job because of her complaints.
The tribunal heard Ms Blackwell joined Smart Tax & Accountancy as a payroll executive in August 2021 and often worked remotely from her home in Manchester.
After three months of employment, Ms Blackwell met virtually with Ashwin Juneja, who “effectively ran the company”, and was told she had passed her probation.
But during the conversation, she complained about Ms Kapoor’s “manner” and said she could be “quite abrupt with her” – without knowing that Mr Juneja was actually her son.
The hearing was told that Ms Blackwell had then been shut “out of Teams calls”.
‘Motivation behind dismissal was personality clash’
In November, she logged an informal grievance and said she believed her treatment was “race-related”. In a meeting the following month, Mr Juneja told her that “racial discrimination is an extremely bold statement to make”.
The tribunal heard that from the start of 2022, Ms Blackwell’s relationship with Ms Kapoor came “under strain” and in one January meeting, she switched from English to Hindi when talking about her.
The hearing was told that Ms Blackwell had been recording Teams calls and Ms Kapoor was “cautious” about discussing her for fear the remarks could be “used against her”.
In February, the executive submitted a formal grievance but this was dismissed and she was sacked two months later.
Bosses told her that she was fired because of a “lack of due care and attention” in her work, but the tribunal noted that they found this excuse to be “unconvincing”.
Employment Judge Callum Cowx said that Ms Blackwell was treated “less favourably” than her colleagues but that this was not because she was “white British”.
He added: “The motivation behind [Ms Blackwell’s] dismissal was the personality clash between herself and [Ms Kapoor], and the complaints made by [Ms Blackwell] about [Ms Kapoor],” he said.
“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].”
But the judge concluded she was subjected to victimisation in the aftermath of the accusations and awarded her £41,181.58 in compensation.