The Free Speech Union has won its biggest ever legal victory at the Employment Tribunal, securing significant damages for Carl Borg-Neal, a dyslexic Lloyds bank manager who was sacked following a workplace free speech row. The Telegraph has more.
Carl Borg-Neal can’t get out his words. Tears fall down his cheeks and he is overcome by an involuntary verbal tic, as if he is choking or has momentarily forgotten how to speak. He is 59 years old and out of work, having been sacked by his employer, Lloyds Bank, for inadvertently blurting out the N word during an anti-racism training session.
An employment tribunal ruled that Lloyds had unfairly dismissed Mr Borg-Neal and discriminated against him on account of his dyslexia, which leads him to “spurt things out before he loses his train of thought”. He has been awarded damages of almost £500,000 – combined with Lloyds’ legal costs, and tax, the bank faces a bill close to £1 million.
The cash is of some comfort to Mr Borg-Neal, a vindication of his campaign to clear his name. What he really wanted, however, was his old job back and he wishes the bank would simply say sorry for sacking him. Without the apology, the allegation that he is racist hangs over his head.
“It is kind of a double-edged sword. When I set out on this legal claim, I said to my mum: ‘If I have to sell my house, I don’t care because this is about clearing my name. Lloyds were calling me racist and that is certainly something I am not and something I have never been,” said Mr Borg-Neal, who is also a Conservative councillor in his local borough council in Andover, Hants.
After a career spanning 30 years with Lloyds and its affiliates, Mr Borg-Neal believes that the bank has treated him like a “pariah” – he was told not to contact former colleagues and friends in the aftermath of that fateful training session on July 16 2021. It has taken Mr Borg-Neal more than two years to win his compensation through a courtroom ordeal that, at one stage, risked him facing financial ruin.
“I feel very discriminated against,” he said. “I often wonder if I wasn’t a white middle-aged male would I have had to go through everything I went through. There is no way of telling. But when I talk to my friends – and as you can imagine a good many are white, middle-aged and male – we all agree that is the worst thing you can be right now. You are bottom of everything.”
The employment tribunal vindicated Mr Borg-Neal in a 46-page judgment that raises serious questions about how major institutions such as Lloyds Bank tackle “very sensitive issues” that arise during diversity training.
It was about an hour into the online training session – attended virtually by about 100 Lloyds managers – during a discussion about “intent vs effect” that Mr Borg-Neal asked how to handle a situation should he hear someone from an ethnic minority use a word that would be offensive if used by someone not of the same ethnicity. When the trainer did not appear to understand the question, Mr Borg-Neal said by way of explanation: “The most common example being [the] use of the N word in the black community.”
“Unfortunately,” pointed out the tribunal, “the claimant used the full word rather than the abbreviation.”
The bank accepted the comment was made without malice and that the question was valid. The employment judge said Mr Borg-Neal’s dyslexia was a “strong factor causing how he expressed himself in a session and in his use of the full word rather than finding a means to avoid it”.
The trainer was left “badly distressed” and took almost a week off work. But some colleagues at the training session questioned her reaction. According to one attendant, Mr Borg-Neal was ”very much reprimanded in front of us all and when [he] tried to apologise or explain he was threatened with ‘you will be thrown off the course’”.
Another said: “I was shocked by the manner and tone used by one presenter to a colleague. After saying at the beginning this would be a safe environment and it is acknowledged we may make mistakes, she launched into a vitriolic attack. Whilst I do not condone what the colleague said … I believe he was trying to ask a valid question to aid understanding.”
Mr Borg-Neal was taken aback by the trainer’s reaction. “She immediately went mad,” said Mr Borg-Neal, “I immediately tried to apologise. I said I didn’t mean to upset anybody. I tried to reword the question but she was just shouting at me. She was basically telling me to be quiet and if I didn’t shut up I would be thrown off the course. I bit the bullet and went quiet.”
He remembers his feelings at the time, a mixture of “upset and anger” – upset that he had caused distress and angry that the trainer had “dealt with it in such an aggressive way”.
A complaint reached Lloyds HR team and disciplinary procedures activated, although Mr Borg-Neal was never suspended and – as he points out – he continued to mentor two junior colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds until his final dismissal in December 2021, prompting his lengthy legal battle for justice.
Worth reading in full.
It goes without saying that everyone at the FSU is delighted that Carl has been able to obtain justice. Not only did he lose a job where he’d found he could excel, in spite of his disability, but during the initial, unnecessarily lengthy disciplinary process and the legal battle that followed his mental and physical health deteriorated. He now suffers back pain brought on by the stress and takes two pills a day for the anxiety, including a sleeping pill to get him through the night.
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