A CONSTRUCTION worker has been awarded compensation after his boss mimicked his Portuguese while he was on the phone, in a case a tribunal said crossed the line into harassment.
The Jersey Employment and Discrimination Tribunal found that the incident “served to violate the Claimant’s dignity or create a humiliating environment”, even though it was brief and stopped when challenged.
The worker, Diogo Emanuel Sousa dos Santos, had been employed by GMK Construction for just over two weeks in September 2025 before his dismissal.
He brought multiple claims including discrimination on grounds of age, race and sex, as well as unfair dismissal and unpaid wages in a case that was heard earlier this month.
While the tribunal rejected most of the claims in a judgment published last week, it upheld the complaint relating to race after hearing that Mr dos Santos had been speaking to his partner in Portuguese during a break when his boss – Mr Greg Kelly – opened a van door and mimicked his speech.
“This is the incident that has given us the most cause for concern,” the panel noted.
Although the behaviour was short-lived, the tribunal said in their judgment: “The Claimant told us that he felt offended, and we have no doubt that the reasonable person envisaged by the statute would have agreed that this incident – short and unwitnessed though it was – served to violate the Claimant’s dignity or create a humiliating environment, as the statute describes.”
However, two other incidents were not found to meet the legal threshold for harassment.
In one, the then-26-year-old claimant was told by Mr Kelly that he looked “looked 40, looked old and ruined”, and laughed, in front of a colleague.
While the tribunal said it was “ultra-cautious” about “the danger of dismissing any form of harassment as mere ‘banter’”, members were “satisfied that a reasonable person would not regard this incident as having crossed the threshold required by the statute”.
In another, the claimant alleged that he was twice touched on the hips and called “my love”. A freelance quantity surveyor who represented the company during the tribunal proceedings argued that in confined spaces on building sites, and particularly where roof work is required, it is “commonplace” for people to need to squeeze past one another. The tribunal did “not find to the necessary standard” that this was harassment.
They tribunal also noted in their judgment that they had considered “an episode in which, frustrated by repeated calls from the Claimant, Mr Kelly sent him a head-and-chest photograph of himself in the shower to demonstrate that he was not ignoring him”.
“While that conduct might fairly be described as eccentric, we do not find that the conduct as a whole amounted to harassment on the grounds of sex within the meaning of the statute. The harassment claim on grounds of sex fails,” the tribunal concluded.
The tribunal separately ruled that the worker had been dismissed during a pay dispute without receiving the required notice, and that he had not been provided with a payslip.
In total, he was awarded £1,872, including £686 for notice pay, £686 for the payslip breach and £500 for the harassment.
The tribunal said the mimicry incident fell into the lowest band of discrimination awards, noting that it was a one-off event, unobserved by others and stopped when challenged.
However, it stressed that even a single incident could meet the legal definition of harassment where it undermines a person’s dignity.
Claims for unfair dismissal and other forms of discrimination were dismissed.
