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An engineering storeman who was sacked after saying “Top of the morning to you” in a fake Irish accent to a colleague has been awarded a five-figure sum after an employment tribunal ruled it was unfair dismissal.
Carl Davis, 57, was working at a manufacturing site in Wales on August 13, 2024, when he greeted a manager, Scott Millward, while listening to Irish music.
The tribunal in Mold was told that Mr Millward, manager of Wrexham’s Oscar Mayer ready meals manufacturing site, was shielding a “red-headed” external auditor when the comments were made and he reported his colleague to the employer, who launched an investigation into whether the comments amounted to racial harassment.
The claimant repeated the phrase several times, with tribunal judge Vincent Ryan acknowledging that he was “effectively channeling the musical atmosphere”.
The judge said Mr Davis adopted the accent in a “scandalous” and “mockery” manner and provoked Mr Millward by “repeating the phrase in a manner that Mr Millward was bound to find irritating and embarrassing”.
He said the claimant was trying to harass Mr Millward in order to get a reaction from him and embarrass him.
He added: “I think it was not intended to racially harass Mr Millward, and there is no evidence before me that it had any effect on anyone.
“Yet it was reprehensible because (Mr Davis) was subordinate to Mr Millward.
“This gave rise to disciplinary proceedings and therefore ultimately contributed to the sanction.”
The tribunal heard that the claimant did not know and had never seen the auditor, who was neither known nor believed to be Irish.
The tribunal was told that a manager, against whom Mr Davis had an unresolved complaint, investigated Mr Davis’s comments.
The judge wrote that Oscar Mayer’s disciplinary case was based on his perception that Mr Davis might have believed the auditor looked “typically Irish”.
The judge found that Mr Davis’s phrasing amounted to harassment by his employer, but did not take into account either his clean disciplinary record or his 27 years of employment for the firm.
The tribunal ruled that the investigator chosen was not “suitable”, witness statements were inconsistent and the investigation was “largely based on assumptions”.
Mr Davis won more than £16,000 for unfair dismissal.
The judge said: “The claimant was accused of terminating employment, using reputational, damaging, racially motivated abuse, an abuse which was likely to create an intimidating, hostile, humiliating, humiliating or offensive working environment; these are serious matters.
“On the specific facts of this case, I found that the dismissal was unfair, which does not mean that I approve of the use of the greeting in question or the use of a mock accent.”
He further said that the case was “not a sign of awareness or non-awareness”.