A RECRUITER has won more than £12,000 after a manager told her she “looks like an alien from the Avatar film” because of her braids.
Jasmine Fubara was left “shocked” when she was told during her interview that she looked like one of the blue, CGI-generated characters from the hit 2009 James Cameron movie.
Jasmine, who models, found the remark about her braids “demeaning” but said she was willing to let it slide as a “one-off error”.
However after she joined Certus Recruitment Group she was subjected to a series of racially insensitive comments – including one colleague asking if she was listening to “ghetto music”.
She was eventually sacked by the recruitment group, based in London, days before she was due to be paid over £2,000 in commission, an employment tribunal heard.
Now she has successfully sued the company for race harassment with the tribunal ruling the firm had a “toxic environment” and ordering it to pay Jasmine £12,515 in compensation.
The hearing in central London was told Jasmine joined the recruitment group as a candidate consultant in March 2022 before being dismissed in September 2022.
Jasmine, who represented herself at the tribunal, claimed that she was subject to a number of incidents during her time there.
“[Certus Recruitment Group] accepts that at an early interview, [a manager] made a comment about [Ms Fubara’s] hair, that it looked like a character from the film Avatar,” the tribunal said.
The movie, which stars Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana, is the highest grossing film of all time making almost $3billion at the box office.
“In his statement, [the manager] characterises this remark in his statement as a friendly comment, made in the context of [Ms Fubara] talking about modelling,” the tribunal continued.
“[She] believes the comment was made after she had accepted the role, it was made she believes because she was wearing her hair in braids; [the manager’s] statement says it was because she had a long ponytail.
“[Certus Recruitment Group]’s case to [Ms Fubara] is that Avatars are blue, the comment ‘was not representative of race’.
“[Ms Fubara’s] evidence, which we accepted, was that she was shocked by this comment, which she believed was clearly related to race; their skin colour ‘is not their only feature, they are cartoons who have long braids and hairstyles which resonate with black culture’.
“[Ms Fubara] believed the remark was demeaning, being compared to an ‘alien’ CGI generated avatar; she wondered why it had been made, but she was prepared to accept it as a one-off error.”
The hearing was told that on another occasion in July 2022 she was working with earphones in when she was asked by a department head whether she was listening to “ghetto music”.
Mr Byrne surprised the tribunal by saying that when he was growing up the word ghetto “was for him only associated with tape decks” as in ghetto-blasters.
The CEO did however accept Jasmine’s characterisation that ghetto is “pejorative and can be a racial stereotype”.
Jasmine overheard another colleague Duncan Simmons in August 2022 saying that they should not bother contacting candidates with non-English names as it would probably be a waste of time.
He denied that he said this claiming that probably 50 per cent of his placed candidates were foreign nationals and that he had left a previous agency because of racism and homophobia.
The tribunal found that comments like this contributed to the “hostile workplace” environment for Jasmine.
Jasmine told the tribunal that a genuine apology from the company was important to her.
Its CEO was described as “argumentative” by the tribunal.
Mr Byrne claimed that the evidence given by Jasmine was “untrue”, though he offered no explanation for this.
He did not offer an apology to Jasmine.
Her claims of race harassment and unauthorised deductions from wages of commission payments were upheld by the tribunal.
