Casino dealer wins race discrimination claim after patron requested white employee serve him (Ms S Tesfagiorgis v Aspinalls Club T/A Crown London Aspinalls and others – 2202256/2020)

In the case of Ms S Tesfagiorgis v Aspinalls Club T/A Crown London Aspinalls and others 2202256/2020 the Employment Tribunal held that Ms Tesfagiorgis began her employment with Aspinalls Club on 12 February 2007 as a Dealer/Inspector.

The factual background of Ms S Tesfagiorgis v Aspinalls Club

Ms Tesfagiorgis began her employment with Aspinalls Club on 12 February 2007 as a Dealer/Inspector.

During the course of Ms Tesfagioris’ employment the Club had a specific set of rules in place which prohibited discrimination and harassment against any member, guest or staff member on the grounds of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation or religious belief. However, these rules were only displayed in the reception and unless patrons stopped to read them they likely remain unaware of the policies; if anyone attempted to hand copies of the rule books to the patrons it usually ended with them discarding the books without bothering to read the contents.

From 2007 to 2015 things at the Club ran quite smoothly. However, from 2015 there were a number of incidents that occurred, including:

• The first incident occurred in June 2015 when Ms Tesfagiorgis’s manager, Mr Green, refused to let her switch swifts with a colleague because of alleged business needs. In fact, the request was denied due to a VIP patron who was playing in the Club and had stipulated on his Player Profile form that he only wanted “Western-looking female staff.” Mr Green wanted to keep the white employee available to deal with the customer;
• The next incident occurred on 28 September 2017 when Ms Tesfagiorgis began her shift; when Ms Tesfagiorgis sat down at the table a patron told her that he wanted a “white dealer”. The Casino Manager was informed and after speaking to the patron the Manager apologised to Ms Tesfagiorgis. Following this Mr Branson (Chief Executive Officer) had a lengthy conversation with Ms Tesfagiorgis during which she suggested the Club implement a forum where staff and SLT members can discuss how the business can improve the handling of racist incidents. Mr Branson relayed this idea to Ms Attrill, the General Manager of HR, who although not seeming fond of the idea, did put it into place;
• On the night of the 3/4 December 2019, while the Claimant was on shift, a patron expressed a preference for dealers that were “females with fair skin”. Mr Hennessy (Area Manager), decided to use a male dealer for this patron as the only female dealers on shift were black. The patron was not informed by anyone at the Aspinall Club that his request was inappropriate and, instead, the Club did its best to accommodate the request by supplying a dealer who was a white male

On 5 December 2019 Ms Tesfagiorgis raised a grievance over the incident on 3/4 December 2019 and later discussed this at a meeting with Mr Branson – Ms Tesfagiorgis alleged that in this meeting Mr Branson sought to justify or diminish the patron’s behaviour by suggesting that his request may have been down to “pure superstition” and asked her if she expected him to turn away such a high-value patron. Mr Branson disputed this version of events saying that he had told Ms Tesfagiorgis that the patron would be spoken to and his membership would be withdrawn if it happened again. He explained that the managers were inexperienced and unfortunately, in this situation they made the wrong decision.

On 10 December 2019 until 31 March 2021 Ms Tesfagiorgis was signed off sick by her GP for a stress reaction and on 13 January 2020 Ms Tesfagiorgis’ solicitor wrote to the Respondent stating that all further correspondence should come through the solicitors and that the Claimant had no faith that her grievance complaint would be addressed by the internal grievance procedure.

On 1 April 2020, in light of the ongoing pandemic, Ms Tesfagiorgis emailed the Club stating that she was “ready, willing and able to return to work” and was placed on the furlough scheme effective from 10 April 2020. Following this, the Claimant did not return to work and instead chose to take voluntary redundancy from 31 October 2020 onward.

The decision of the Employment Tribunal

On 14 April 2020 Ms Tesfagiorgis presented claims for direct race, direct and indirect sex discrimination, harassment related to sex and related to race and victimisation to the Employment Tribunal.

The Tribunal found that all claims aside from the claim of direct race discrimination failed.

Direct race discrimination

The Tribunal considered all allegations put forward by Ms Tesfagiorgis and found that the following amounted to direct race discrimination:

• Both incidents in June 2015; and
• The incident on 4 December 2019 (where Ms Tesfagiorgis was not granted the shift swap or put forward to deal with the patron was because she was black).

The Respondent’s defence for not allowing Ms Tesfagiorgis to go and deal with the patrons because it was necessary to accommodate the patron’s request was compared by the Tribunal to a shopper going into a supermarket to buy an expensive bottle of champagne and saying they would not buy it if served by a black clerk. The Employment Tribunal stated in its judgment that “it would not be a defence to say that they did not want to lose the valuable till transaction.”

The Employment Tribunal concluded that the Club’s own policy stated that patrons could act in a discriminatory way towards any employees and that, therefore, granting the patron’s requests amounted to less favourable treatment towards Ms Tesfagiorgis because of her race.

Find out more about race discrimination

Our lawyers view on Ms S Tesfagiorgis v Aspinalls Club

Rebekka Kreisz, paralegal at Redmans comments on this case: “I found the comparison the Tribunal drew between a shopper at a supermarket and the situations at the club to be illuminating. Businesses have a duty to take care of their employees regardless of the affluence of a particular customer and the potential loss to the business. I think the judgment of this case is very useful in terms of seeing how the Tribunal breaks down the various allegations and tests them against the legal requirements (a number of the allegations were also out of time for limitation purposes).”

The decision of the Employment Tribunal in Ms S Tesfagiorgis v Aspinalls Club T/A Crown London Aspinalls 2202256/2020 and others can be found here.