United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT


 


MR JUSTICE DOUGLAS BROWN

1. This is an appeal by Miss Rebecca Mohamed from a decision of the Employment Tribunal at Stratford, the Chairman, Ms I Manley. The Extended Reasons were given on 12 January 2001. The decision was that the Appellant had not been discriminated against on the grounds of her sex.
2. Miss Mohamed has not appeared today. She sent, on 24 July 2001, a long letter to the Registrar seeking an adjournment of this Preliminary Hearing of her appeal until "some time after March 2002". She sets out in the letter extremely sad circumstances involving her family, particularly her small sister and a serious illness she is suffering from, and to justify the adjournment so far as she herself is concerned, she encloses a note dated 24 July from Dr Haider, her General Practitioner. That does not in fact contain any medical opinion. It merely gives an account provided by Miss Mohamed herself of her visits to hospital in June and the result. It is not necessary we think in these reasons to go into that in any more detail. Sufficient if we say that the reasons which Miss Mohamed put forward for having this Preliminary Hearing adjourned are not persuasive to us. Certainly there is no support in the medical report and a factor which is decisive so far as we are concerned is that having considered her Grounds of Appeal and the reasons and all the relevant material we have come to the conclusion that even if Miss Mohamed were here herself to prosecute her appeal she would have no realistic chance of persuading us that this appeal should proceed to a Full Hearing with the Respondent represented. Accordingly we propose to decide the appeal now notwithstanding Miss Mohamed's absence and the reasons she put forward for an adjournment.
3. Miss Mohamed was employed as a security guard by the Respondent, Securicor Guarding Ltd, at various sites in and around London between March 1999 and September 1999. She was in the end dismissed for misconduct after an appeal process was gone through which was unsuccessful so far as she was concerned. In her application she made a number of complaints of sexual harassment made by male security guards with whom she was working. She also complained that the manner in which her complaints were investigated by the Respondent's management were unsatisfactory and discriminatory. After a three day hearing the Tribunal correctly directed itself as to the law, they considered Strathclyde Regional Council v Porcelli [1986] ICR 564 and British Telecommunications Plc v Williams [1997] IRLR 668. They then made detailed findings on each of the incidents alleged by Miss Mohamed. They accepted that her earlier allegation on inappropriate language from two of her fellow guards had happened but it had ceased on her objecting to it and she had suffered no detriment. Her Grounds of Appeal, which we shall refer to shortly, are of her own composition and do not complain of any error of law or perverse finding of fact. Therefore we do not mention the evidence in any detail. It is sufficient if we say that each allegation was found not to have been proved. Her complaints against her fellow employees were properly investigated. The Tribunal held that she was not discriminated against in the manner of her dismissal. She was dismissed for being continually late, for leaving her post and for other inappropriate behaviour. The Tribunal decided that she was not dismissed for a discriminatory reason.
4. Her grounds are these:

"I would like to appeal against the decision of the Tribunal dated 12 January 2001 on the ground that the Court failed to recognise that had I not been a woman but a man that I would not have been subjected to harassment of the sexual nature."

The other ground is this:

"The Tribunal also failed admittedly to contact a witness that would have been important to the facts of the case, they also refused evidence that my GP provided concerning the effect that this behaviour had on my health, ie suicidal, emotional depression and therefore did not take into consideration the damage caused emotionally."

She then said she hoped that the grounds would be sufficient. An amendment if needed might be provided but none in fact was.

5. It is plain that those grounds do not raise any error of law on the face of the Tribunal's decision. There is no identification of the witness the Tribunal was said to have failed to contact or any explanation as to why it would be left to the Tribunal to contact a witness. The views of the Chairman were asked by the Registrar and the Chairman had no comment on the second ground of appeal. As these grounds do not allege any error of law, or appealable error of fact, we regret that this appeal can go no further to a Full Hearing between the parties and the appeal is dismissed.