An IT manager has won a race discrimination claim against his
employer Daimler Chrysler after months of racist slurs, which
culminated in him being made redundant.
Khalid Jayyosi, 29, was asked by his
colleagues if he was a bomb maker, compared with 11 September
terrorists and told to “go back to Sangatte". He is in line to win
up to £200,000 in compensation.
Jayyosi is Palestinian by birth but has lived
in the UK since 1993. He had held several IT jobs without incident
before taking up the post of head of IT research and development at
Daimler Chrysler’s Milton Keynes base.
He was made redundant in June 2002 - 10 months
after he joined the firm. The tribunal found Daimler Chrysler
guilty of race discrimination, and concluded that Jayyosi was
treated as he was purely because of his Palestinian origins.
A spokeswoman for Daimler Chrysler said the
company was “very disappointed” with the outcome of the tribunal,
but said the company would take on board the suggestions it made
and would “learn from the experience”.
Daimler Chrysler claimed Jayyosi was made
redundant because of “structural changes” in his department.
However, the spokeswoman could not say if any other staff had
been singled out for redundancy.
The case follows a similar incident last November where two
German IT consultants complained of racial abuse at Motorola's UK
HQ in Swindon. Jens Puhle and Heinrich Sawatzki claimed colleagues
gave them Nazi nicknames, goose-stepped around the office and
taunted them about the Second World War.
Makbool Javaid, a partner in the employment law practice at law
firm DLA said, "The message of the Daimler Chrysler case and other
such cases is that IT departments need to be subjected to the same
robust practices that apply to everyone else," said Javaid. "It
illustrates that employers need to not only have policies in
relation to diversity but need to implement them and ensure that
managers have training and understanding of discrimination
issues."