A former National Gallery attendant who claimed her boss was racist for asking her to wear a badge with a Kuwaiti flag to show she could speak Arabic has lost her case at an employment tribunal.
Dana El Farra, who worked at the gallery as an employee of the security company Securitas, said that the incident was one of a series of “racial micro-aggressions”.
The tribunal dismissed her claim, saying that taken individually or together the comments she received “do not meet the threshold where they can be said to have violated her dignity, or to have created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for her”.
The tribunal heard that El Farra was asked if she would be happy to wear a Kuwaiti flag on her work badge to show visitors that she could speak Arabic. El Farra, who is British with British parents from Kuwait and describes herself as of Arab ethnicity, took offence and responded that she would only wear a British flag.
She argued that the request had been “racially motivated” and also complained of being treated worse than Spanish and Italian staff due to her ethnicity.
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El Farra, who began working as a visitor engagement assistant for Securitas in March 2018 but left the following year, was asked by her Italian manager in an email: “What is your native country?”
The email read: “This is to identify your mother tongue with the appropriate flag, and it is not mandatory, so I hope you are still happy to wear your flag?”
El Farra responded that she would object to wearing any flag other than a Union Jack and that she “would not wear a flag which reflected a country she had never been a national of”, the London Central employment tribunal heard.
In her reply, she enclosed a copy of her birth certificate. Her manager responded that she had only asked the question because she had previously told her that she spoke Arabic.
The tribunal ruled that this was “a clumsy way” of asking if El Farra would be willing to wear a badge of a particular country, but acknowledged the manager’s first language was not English.
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El Farra claimed the email was racist because it was sent only to her and a colleague from Algeria. The tribunal heard that the manager had sent the email because she was compiling a spreadsheet of languages spoken by staff in public-facing roles.
El Farra’s duties at the National Gallery included responding to queries, providing visitor information, selling and scanning tickets and working in the cloakroom.
Frances Spencer, an employment judge, said: “[El Farra] was sensitive about questions relating to her ethnicity. That is not a criticism. She is British and such questions can indeed be offensive.
“However, these questions need to be looked at in the context of [Securitas’s] workplace where employees were drawn from all over the world and may be regarded as attempts to get to know each other.
“[El Farra] did not complain officially, so that the various different employees about whom [El Farra] complains may not have been aware of her objections.
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“We find that, whether taken individually or together, and in the context of [Securitas’s] workplace, these comments do not meet the threshold where they can be said to have violated her dignity, or to have created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for her.”
Ms El Farra today said her parents are in fact British, not Kuwaiti, and also that she would be appealing against the tribunal’s judgement.
She has complained to the Employment Tribunal Service that the judgement contains a “factual error - that my parents are Kuwaiti - they are British and have never held the Kuwaiti nationality”.
Ms El Farra added: “The employment judge has made an error of fact by misrepresenting my claim, which was never about wearing flags.
“The claim was about being persistently asked about my ethnicity, despite saying on numerous occasions that I am British by birth.”
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Since Ms El Farra’s complaint and request for a correction, the online publication of the judgement has been removed.
She believes references to her parents’ nationality will be amended before it is republished.