A white man who was sacked from a curry-making company who told him to ‘go and work for an English firm’ has won a racism case against his former employer.
Colin Sorby, 31, complained that he was racially abused by his supervisor, Azheem Akhtar, after being told he did not understand the recipes being made at the production plant because he’s white.
He had worked at Mumtaz Foods in Bradford, Yorkshire, for around 15 weeks when the comments were made. Colin was part of a team making the recipes for Mumtaz’s curries, supplying ready meals to Lidl.
An employment tribunal upheld Colin’s claims for racial discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
After the judgement was published on Tuesday, Colin, from Hartlepool, said:
I’m overjoyed with the decision, it’s taken a long time to go through the whole process.
It was deplorable [the way I was treated], as soon as I had made the complaint I was made to feel ostracised by Mr Akhtar and my allegations weren’t taken seriously.
Now working for Morrison’s, Colin says he was the only white British worker out of about 50 employees at Mumtaz at the time.
It didn’t bother me being the only white British person there until after he made the comment that I should go work for an English company.
The complaints that I couldn’t cook because I’m not Asian and don’t know the cuisine were made after I complained about his previous comment and was just an excuse he was making to try to get me sacked which worked.
He said that he would make between 12 to 14 curries every day, with each one weighing around 300kg as each batch was spread across two massive vats. Apparently, the process of making the curries was pretty straightforward:
The recipes were written in English with strict times of when to add everything, when to mix and how long should be waited before moving on to the next step. There was no way to make an error really.
The amount of compensation he will receive will be decided at a later date. A company spokesperson told the Metro:
(We) operate on a strict anti-discrimination policy in the workplace. ‘Any breach of the company policy would lead to immediate disciplinary action.
We provide regular equality and diversity training to all employees. The company employs people from all backgrounds and will continue to grow diversity within the organisation providing equal opportunities.
Well, not every day you hear about an anti-white discrimination case in the courts but seems a common sense result here. Discrimination is discrimination no matter what your skin colour is.
The funny part is that Colin’s supervisor could have probably got rid of him without any issue if he hadn’t brought up his skin colour. He could have said he tasted Colin’s curries and thought they were subpar and that’s why he was getting the sack. But nope, he just had to bring Colin’s nationality and skin colour into it – two immutable characteristics he cannot do anything about! That’s what you call racism, indeed!
