“I cant believe how many hoops you have to go through to get justice!” Clive Henry
After over a year of legal battles former UPS employee Clive Henry who was suing his employer for race discrimination has lost his appeal case with the European Commission but vows to fight on.
Clive Henry described a campaign of work intimidation and excessive work demands which he said was deliberate to force him out of his job in January 2008. He was asked by a manager to supervise the merge of all the Lynx Courier accounts in his department; only to have his duties taken over in July by a director at Lynx couriers, which is about the time when things began to change for the worse. (read Clive Henry Vs UPS Ltd – Race Discrimination Case pending date in the Court of Appeal)
He was told that he was not meeting new targets which was set about a month after the director of Lynx took over and placed on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) which he says was never authorised by Human Resources (HR).
He was shouted at and given a written warning on a smudged paper which he found unprofessional and insulting.
Clive was the only black employee at the company and the only employee ever to be placed on the PIP.
After being signed off work with occupational stress and being messed about by the HR department regarding his PIP status Clive decided that he had enough and resigned from UPS on March 11, 2010.
He took UPS to a Race Discrimination Tribunal hearing, but said that the judge was biased and rejected key evidence critical to his case which is why he decided to take his fight higher and appeal to the European Commission for Human Rights in Belgium.
Mr Henry informed Minority Perspective recently that the European Commission has rejected his appeal and told him that in their conclusion the case is closed.
The European Commission wrote Mr Henry saying, “We have not been able to identify any breach of EU law by the United Kingdom in your matter” He was also told that national courts are responsible for applying the law in these matters and the Commission could not interfere with national court proceedings.
Clive said, “I have now filed my complaint directly to The European Court of Human Rights in France.”
“I cant believe how many hoops you have to go through to get justice!”
Whether the European Court of Human Rights in France will provide Clive with the justice he seeks remains to be seen.
Clive’s case, just like Abdul Musa, an Asian Royal Mail worker was was racially abused and suffered a campaign of racist intimidation and threats (read Asian Royal Mail worker wins race discrimination employment tribunal), highlights how serious racism in employment is.
In September I wrote an article about how the coalition government are planning to weaken the equality laws (Read Coalition government plan to weaken equality laws). In this article I highlighted how the future for racial equality was troubling considering the budget cutbacks for voluntary race organisations and even the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
In the future the government plans to introduce fees for workers like Clive Henry who seek justice because of workplace racism. TUC General Secretary, Brendan Barber referred to this plan as, “…chequebook justice..”.
This is a crucial time for black and minority ethnic communities to form strong community-funded organisations independent of government finances that can tackle the increasingly unsure future which black and minority workers are going to face.