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'African staff gang up on me'
8:48am Friday 16th May 2008
RACE equality council managers in Oxford refused to give an employee the pay rise he had been promised because he was the wrong kind of black man, a tribunal has heard.
Nolan Victory claims his managers - who were all black - ignored his complaints and even bellowed at him because he was from the wrong part of the world.
He told an employment tribunal managers at Oxford Racial Equality Council took a dislike to him because he was of Caribbean origin, rather than African.
"The management was made up of black Africans and they discriminated against me, because I was the only black Caribbean," he told the panel yesterday.
"They discriminated against me in the way they treated me when I asked for resources and in the way they treated me when I raised any complaints.
"I believe they treated me in this way because I am of Caribbean origin. They definitely showed a bias against me in their conduct, in the manner in which resources were dispensed."
Mr Victory, whose contract with the organisation ended in December last year, said one of his bosses, Nigerian-born Patrick Tolani, screamed and shouted at him at its offices in Floyds Row, Oxford.
Racial equality councils exist across the UK to monitor equal opportunities in the public and private sector.
The organisations are also supposed to monitor racial attacks and provide support to victims of racial discrimination.
Mr Victory, who is unemployed, told the tribunal in Reading that the council's management had promised him a pay rise in May last year, but that Mr Tolani vetoed the rise, which would have taken his salary from £23,000 to £30,000.
He told panel chairman John Livesey he had suffered a total of six separate instances of discrimination between October 4 and December 19 last year.
Rebecca Dennis, representing the council, said the organisation and Mr Tolani - who is also named in the claim - vehemently denied there had been any racial bias in the way that Mr Victory had been treated.
She said while it was true that relations between Mr Victory and Mr Tolani had not always been as civil as they might have been, there had never been any racial undertones.
Referring specifically to the allegation that Mr Tolani had been racist on December 9, as he hammered on an office door, she said: "Mr Tolani aggressively banged on the door, shouting 'It's my office, it's my office, you're making me angry'.
"It might have been intimidation of Mr Victory, but it's a world away from discrimination."
At the end of the pre-hearing review, Mr Livesey said a full hearing would have to determine the validity of the claims as they related to employment law.
He said: "There was also an alleged failure by the respondents to pay the claimant for duties undertaken above and beyond his contractual role."
Mr Livesey said the panel would reconvene for a full two-day hearing of Mr Victory's claim on Monday, September 1.
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