‘Ethnic background? You’ll know what it’s like to be oppressed’
Mixed-race Sky TV engineer awarded £14,000 for adviser’s ‘distressing’ remark
A MIXED-RACE television engineer has won £14,000 in a discrimination claim after a white colleague said she must have suffered ‘oppression’ because of her ethnic minority background.
Jane Bradbury was left ‘distressed’ after Rosemary Cook, an ‘Inclusion Advocate’ at Sky, insisted she must have experienced prejudice due to her Latino heritage.
An employment tribunal heard Miss Cook made the remark during a conversation about a racism presentation she was due to give following the murder of George Floyd and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
But when she made the assumption that Mrs Bradbury must have experienced oppression, the 50year-old ‘forcibly’ rejected it as ‘I have never felt oppressed in my life’. Following the conversation in June 2020, she became ‘ very upset’ and self- conscious about her skin colour and had to take several days off work.
Now, the field engineer has successfully sued Sky In-Home Services for race discrimination and has been awarded £14,000 in compensation. The tribunal ruled that although Miss Cook had not meant to cause offence, the remark was ‘blunt’ and an assumption which amounted to stereotyping.
Mrs Bradbury was later sacked in October 2020 for gross misconduct after visiting dozens of customers when she failed to isolate following a holiday to Spain, as she was required to do at the time.
She claimed unfair dismissal, arguing that Sky had not sacked presenter Kay Burley and political editor Beth Rigby over Covid breaches, and that her son’s job as airline cabin crew led her to believe she didn’t need to isolate. The tribunal dismissed the claim and one of sex discrimination.
The Scottish hearing was told Mrs Bradbury joined Sky as a customer adviser in 2010. In 2018, she moved to the broadcasting giant’s In-Home Services department.
Mrs Bradbury, who was adopted by white parents, later became an Inclusion Advocate with Miss Cook. After raising the issue of their conversation with bosses, Mrs Bradbury was told she was being removed from this role to protect her ‘emotional well-being’.
Last night, Mrs Bradbury, who lives in Stockport, said: ‘ I’m happy with the result.’