A Ministry of Defence civil servant sued for racism after he was disciplined for buying a vacuum cleaner and taking an Uber to the airport while he was supposed to be working from home during the pandemic.
Victor Stanley-Idum gave a series of excuses of why he was away from his desk during office hours – including that he needed to go and buy a Hoover, an employment tribunal heard.
The Senior Executive Officer caused concern among his bosses due to his ‘casual attitude to working hours’ which came as he and his colleagues were working remotely and the usual management supervision was ‘absent’, the hearing was told.
As a result he was put on a strict timetable so they could better monitor how he was spending his time, the tribunal was told.
But after this his relationship with managers deteriorated to the point that Mr Stanley-Idum – who is British of Nigerian heritage – sued the MoD for racism, claiming that his boss held a stereotypical view of ‘Black Africans being lazy’.
Now his claims have been dismissed with the tribunal finding bosses had acted fairly because his working day had become ‘unstructured’ and he was doing ‘things that were unrelated to work’.
The hearing – held remotely – was told that Mr Stanley-Idum started work at the MoD as an analyst in April 2017 before being promoted to work as a project manager in the Central Transformation team in April 2020, a month after lockdown began.
By the autumn of the following year, however, his managers had significant doubts about his ability to do the job and his ‘unorthodox’ working style, the tribunal heard.
Victor Stanley-Idum gave a series of excuses of why he was away from his desk during office hours – including that he needed to go and buy a Hoover
‘The background in October 2021 was the unusual situation in which colleagues were working remotely from each other because of Covid-19 lockdowns and home working, and the usual office interaction and management supervision was almost entirely absent in the case of [Mr Stanley-Idum ] and the department he was working in,’ the hearing was told.
His boss Sharon Docherty became concerned about his ‘casual attitude to working hours’ and to ‘arrangements made with colleagues’, the tribunal heard.
This included arriving late for a meeting claiming he had had to deal with his council tax bill, failing to tell managers he was moving house and so would be without broadband on a work day and not attending work away days.
In addition, he missed a morning’s work to pick up family members from the airport.
‘[Questioned about it] he stated that he had taken his laptop with him, took an Uber taxi and ‘conducted my day’s affairs while at the airport and in the back of my Uber’,’ the hearing was told.
‘[The MoD’s] evidence was that the sensitive documents which the team worked on were not held locally on laptops and therefore team members would need to be online to carry out their work.
‘The Tribunal found [his] evidence on the extent to which he was able to work at the same time as carrying out this airport run unconvincing.’
MoD bosses believed he was giving them ‘inconsistent or inaccurate accounts’ of what had occurred and issued him with an informal warning for minor misconduct claiming he had ‘misrepresented his availability to work’.
The Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, Westminster, central London
As part of the warning, Mrs Docherty issued Mr Stanley-Idum with a timetable instructing him to check in and out of work at fixed times.
Amid growing concerns about his performance and behaviour, in September 2022 he missed an email inviting him to a meeting because ‘he had taken a break and run to the store to buy a new Hoover’, the tribunal heard.
The project manager unsuccessfully launched a grievance over his treatment claiming Mrs Docherty was invoking ‘a racial stereotype of laziness and dishonesty in relation to [him.]’
He then sued the MoD for race and disability discrimination, race harassment and victimisation.
Many of his claims had been made too late and of those that weren’t, none were upheld by the tribunal.
Employment Judge Tim Adkin said: ‘We find that the reason for the approach taken by Mrs Docherty was entirely that she had become concerned that [his] performance in his role and that working day had become unstructured.
‘He was working remotely, as indeed were most of his colleagues. There were a series of concerns raised about his output and it was difficult to monitor what [he]t was workingon.
‘There is evidence that was taking time during the working day to do things that were unrelated to work.
‘We have not formed the impression based on all the evidence in this case that Mrs Docherty held a stereotypical view of Black Africans being lazy or dishonest nor indeed that that was a widely held stereotype.’
