The Mayfair-based casino racially discriminated against a member of staff by permitting a customer to not have black dealers at their table, as reported by ITV.
The incident took place in December 2019, when Semhar Tesfagiorgis and a colleague were prevented from working at a table after a customer requested to have “females with fair skin” working on it.
Aspinalls argued that it did not permit Tesfagiorgis and her colleague to work on the table to appease the customer, as opposed to discriminating against Tesfagiorgis, who worked as a dealer at the casino from 2007 to 2020. Aspinalls said it was necessary to accommodate patrons’ requests regardless of how unreasonable they were.
“Our finding is that the claimant and her black female colleagues were held back from going on duty because they were not ‘fair-skinned, female dealers’ or ‘western-looking female staff’,” the judgement read.
“The accommodation of the request was direct race discrimination of the claimant because but for her race she would have been asked to deal to the patron. The granting of that request was less favourable treatment by the managers because of race.”
Tesfagiorgis, who was not allowed to swap a shift with a colleague as the patron did not want a black dealer, commented: “I tried for many years to open a dialogue about the racism myself and many others were often faced with but I was either shut down, ignored or gaslighted each time.
“The direct discrimination myself and other black colleagues received was not an isolated incident. Although the tribunal could not rule on past events due to time limits, they have acknowledged this was the case and for once Crown Aspinalls will finally be forced to do the same, for this I am grateful to the employment tribunal.”
