A Black warehouse worker has won a race harassment claim after a disgruntled colleague wrote the word “slave” on a piece of machinery.
The colleague had meant it not as a racial slur but as an expression of his anger at, as he saw it, being overworked and underpaid, an employment tribunal heard.
But the presence of the word in the workplace violated Seedy Fofana’s dignity and created a “hostile, humiliating and offensive environment for him”, the tribunal ruled.
Awarding Fofana £3,000 compensation, the employment judge David Hughes concluded that the graffito did relate to race even though that had not been the intention.
Hughes said: “This is because the term ‘slave’ will, we find, evoke in contemporary English speakers the enslavement of Black people. All right-thinking people regard slavery as a monstrosity.
“Mr Fofana, an evidently proud Black man, feels the evil of slavery viscerally. That is understandable and respectable. We accept his sense of hurt at the graffito is genuine.”
He added: “The graffito could bear a number of meanings. It could carry the meaning that [the colleague] intended. It might have been understood as a comment on obedient machinery … taking the place of the labour of humans, or on humans’ relationship to machines.
“But when one hears the word slavery, English speakers in this jurisdiction in this decade will probably first think of the enslavement of Black people by white people.”
The hearing in Bristol was told that Fofana was the only Black man at Window Widgets in Gloucester, which deals in plastic and metal parts for windows.
Another worker, Tony Bennett, had taken to writing graffiti referencing “modern slavery” and “slavery” around the warehouse in protest at working conditions. This included writing the words “Slave No” with an arrow pointing to the number 3 on a Hubtex machine, which is similar to a forklift truck.
Bosses removed all the graffiti created by Bennett except the one on the Hubtex as they had not spotted it, but Fofana saw it during a stock-take. He did not report it but resigned the following month complaining about hostile behaviour and sued the company, claiming £500,000 in compensation.
The judge said the conclusion that the company had failed to remove a piece of graffiti that it had not seen might be seen as harsh. The judgment said that once the company was made aware of it, it removed it.