Boots pharmacist wins £60k payout over racial ‘harassment’ and unfair dismissal
A tribunal has ordered Boots alone to pay a pharmacist some £15,000 after finding he was wrongfully dismissed and stereotyped “as an aggressive black man” at work.
A pharmacist of Nigerian descent is owed a total of £58,800 from Boots management services and one “disrespectful and unprofessional” colleague, tribunal documents published yesterday (August 15) have revealed.
In October, an employment tribunal upheld claims of “harassment related to race” brought forward by the Boots pharmacist and found that the multiple’s “grossly inadequate” investigation resulted in his unfair dismissal.
But last month (July 24), employment judge Massarella decided that both Boots and a pre-registration pharmacy technician who the pharmacist worked with are “jointly and severally liable” for “injury to feelings” and “aggravated damages” compensation.
The pair, after additional interest and costs, are responsible for amends totaling £43,736, the documents said.
Meanwhile, the tribunal ordered Boots alone to pay an additional £15,064.
It said it must compensate the pharmacist for his “successful unfair…dismissal claim” and “loss of statutory rights”.
“Personalised abuse”
C+D previously reported that the claimant was working as the responsible pharmacist at Boots’ Silva Island Way branch in Wickford, Essex, when colleagues created “a hostile, humiliating and offensive environment for the [pharmacist] and violated his dignity”, the tribunal found.
The pre-registration pharmacy technician and a pharmacy adviser’s treatment of him “escalated…from dismissive discourtesy” to “personalised abuse”, up to “the most extreme” act of threating to call the police, it said.
It heard evidence that the pharmacy staff members, who are both white and were “junior” to the pharmacist, “refused” to help him file bagged items and prescriptions and also “refused” to help an Asian customer and their mother pick up a prescription.
When the pharmacist asked the pharmacy adviser to leave the pharmacy for the rest of the day “because of the way she was behaving”, both colleagues told him that he should leave instead as they were no longer “prepared to work with him”, the documents said.
The tribunal found that despite not being present, the store manager – who is also white – shouted at the pharmacist on the telephone that he was “an utter disgrace” and asked him to leave “without hearing his side of the story”, while one of the staff members threatened to call the police if he did not.
Boots investigation “simply not fit for purpose”
Tribunal documents said that the two pharmacy workers’ “repeated allegations of aggression” reasonably led it to conclude that both “were stereotyping or racially profiling [the pharmacist] as an aggressive black man, when all he was doing was seeking to assert his authority in circumstances where they were undermining it”.
It stressed that the “experienced” pharmacist “is not physically intimidating”, was “a quietly spoken, courteous person” and a “dignified [and] sensitive” man.
The tribunal added that Boots’ “most serious failure” in its investigation of the pharmacist’s allegations “was the almost complete failure properly to investigate whether race was a factor in [his] treatment”.
It said that the Boots pharmacist store manager who conducted the initial grievance hearing “failed to consider the possibility that race was a factor in any meaningful way” and “made no attempt to contact the two Asian customers”, describing this as a “serious flaw”.
Additionally, the tribunal found it “plainly excessive” that it took six months to complete the investigation after the incident took place, concluding that the investigation was “simply not fit for purpose”.
The pharmacist resigned from his position on April 3 2021, referring to the “prolonged nature of the investigation”, the “failure to properly investigate his allegations of discrimination” and “being ignored throughout the process” in his resignation letter.
In October, a Boots spokesperson that the multiple stands “firmly against workplace harassment of any kind”.
“We are reviewing the court’s findings and will reflect and take action on any learnings,” they added.
Meanwhile, the Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA) last month said that the regulator has “failed” black students in its response to a General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) pharmacy education consultation.
“It is unclear what steps the GPhC has taken to independently assess any potential bias in its own registration exam nor what steps it has taken to support black African students,” it said.
