Shop barred man over Roma 'stereotype', tribunal finds
A supermarket whose staff insisted a Roma man was denied service for shouting and calling them "racists" has been ordered to pay him €6,000 for racial discrimination and harassment.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) concluded the man was refused service "based on a stereotype" and that the staff at the shop knew the man was Roma and were "under instruction" to deny him service if he came in.
The findings were made in an anonymised decision on a complaint under the Equal Status Act 2000 against an unidentified supermarket in a provincial town.
The tribunal heard the man was living in the town over nine years and that his home was a short walk from the supermarket, from which his wife had been barred in April 2023. This was because, according to the store's owner, she became abusive and threw a basket at him after he told her that her children were being disruptive and annoying customers.
Lorna Madden BL, appearing instructed by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), submitted that in addition to discrimination and harassment on the grounds of race and ethnicity, her client had also been victimised for filing initial notice of a claim of discrimination on behalf of his wife after she was barred.
The claimant said he decided not to pursue the matter further and later went to the shop to meet its owner, apologising for his wife’s behaviour.
On 5 October 2023, while in the store with his daughter, the man said he had gone to the till to pay for his shopping but was told by a worker that he "was not allowed in the store".
The shop assistant, Ms A, denied telling the man he was barred. She said she "had an immediate feeling of dread and felt anxious and intimidated by the complainant before he had said a word" and told the WRC he was "staring" at her.
Ms A stated that the complainant then said: "Why are you staring at me?"
"Did I know he was Roma? This had nothing to do with nationality," she told the WRC. The complainant then called her a "racist" and she put the groceries aside and called her manager over, she said.
The assistant manager, Mr C, said the claimant was "shouting loudly" when he came over and that he told the claimant: "Calm down, boy" after Ms A told him she had been called a racist.
Mr C said he offered to serve the complainant, but the man then called him a racist and that at that point he decided to ask him to leave.
The complainant was "barred because he called us racists", Mr C added.
Mobile phone footage taken by the complainant during the incident recorded the assistant manager, Mr C, telling the complainant that he was not being served because he was "calling people racist", the tribunal noted.
The claimant’s position was that he used the term 'racism’, but didn’t call the staff ‘racist’ during this interaction, the tribunal heard.
The footage then showed the staff member pointing to the door and telling the claimant: "Get out and talk to the owner," the tribunal said.
A garda who came to the shop when the claimant called 999 said the man became "very irate" and demanded a different officer attend, calling him "racist" and standing too close to him. The garda said he decided not to arrest the claimant because the man’s daughter was with him.
The supermarket owner, Mr B, accepted that the CCTV footage provided to the WRC only showed the "aftermath" and did not capture what actually happened when the claimant went to the till. He said the footage was "wiped" the following month and that in hindsight he should have kept it.
When it was put to Mr B in cross-examination that it was not credible that he did not know the complainant and his family were Roma, particularly in view of the fact that the complainant’s wife wore a traditional long dress, he said this was not apparent to him because he had seen her wearing wearing tracksuit bottoms.
The tribunal heard the garda’s written account of the matter included the statement: "I was informed by the staff that the male was barred and that when told so, he became aggressive and started calling them racist."
The supermarket, which was represented by Tommy Smyth of TSA Consultants, denied racial discrimination and took the position that the complainant was "unpleasant and rude to employees, escalating to calling them racist at the till" and filming them without their permission.
Adjudicator Thomas O’Driscoll considered it "illogical" that a man would spend 10-15 minutes in a shop with his daughter picking out purchases before going to the till and becoming "abusive and aggressive for no particular reason".
"It is crucial to recognise that aggression does not occur in isolation but is often a response to a preceding action or event," he wrote.
He called the respondent’s evidence "unconvincing in several key aspects", including the deletion of "crucial" CCTV footage. He also noted the Garda report that staff had stated the complainant "reacted negatively when informed he was barred, not the other way around".
"The respondent’s position that there was no bias against the complainant’s Roma heritage is noted, but I am, satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the denial of service was based on a stereotype associated with persons of Roma heritage," Mr O’Driscoll wrote.
He concluded the refusal of service amounted to an inference of discrimination on the grounds of membership of the Traveller or Roma community that "was not satisfactorily rebutted". He also found the "ejection" of the man from the shop constituted harassment. The "humiliation suffered… in front of his young daughter" described by the claimant was an aggravating factor, he added.
However, he concluded that since there was no evidence any of the shop workers knew that statutory notice of alleged discrimination had been served on the shop on behalf of the claimant’s wife, there was no evidence of victimisation.
Mr O’Driscoll directed the respondent to pay €6,000 in compensation to the man.
Boy refused service
In a separate decision, the WRC has this week awarded €5,000 to an 11-year-old Traveller boy who was refused service when he went in by himself to buy a soft drink at a different shop on the evening of 23 November last year.
The boy’s father, who was waiting outside in a car, said his son returned to him upset, having been told to leave.
He said that when they went back in together, a worker told them there was a "law" that they could not serve a child under 14 without an adult being present – and pointed them to a sign to that effect.
The sign read: "For health and safety reasons all under-14s must be accompanied by an adult after 6pm in this store," according to legal submissions.
The shop’s owner gave sworn evidence that he had put in the policy in January 2020 after an elderly man suffered "life-changing injuries" because of teenagers "running down the aisles of the shop".
The worker denied telling the boy "it’s the law" - and also denied that the boy was distressed.
The boy’s father showed the tribunal receipts which he said showed two other minors who were not members of the Travelling community, but of African and Polish descent, had been served "without issue and without an accompanying adult" after the 6pm cut-off point.
Adjudicator Patsy Doyle found the respondent had failed to provide her with evidence that the policy of not serving unaccompanied under-14s after 6pm was being applied consistently.
It had also failed to rebut the evidence presented in the form of the receipts showing that under-14s who were not members of the Travelling Community were served after 6pm, she noted.
Upholding a complaint of discrimination made on behalf of the boy under the Equal Status Act 2000, Ms Doyle awarded him €5,000. She also ordered the shop’s management to "ensure their policy is implemented in a non-discriminatory manner".
Both decisions were anonymised by the tribunal, wholly or partly due to the involvement of minors.
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