THE Employment Tribunal has recently ruled that an employer’s instruction to a Russian employee not to speak her native Russian at work was not race discrimination, nor racial harassment.

In this case, the employer conducted animal testing. Security was a key issue as the business needed to protect against animal rights infiltration.

So for effective management of employees and security reasons, managers needed to be able to understand all employee conversations. 

The employer became concerned when the employee in question would leave her workstation and speak in Russian on her telephone.

It found her behaviour suspicious and was concerned that she might be an animal rights infiltrator. The business therefore imposed a policy of requiring only English to be spoken at work. 

On the facts, the Tribunal decided that the employer's language policy was imposed not because of the claimant's race or national origin, but because of her behavior at work.

It was neither direct discrimination, nor harassment and there was no evidence that the instruction had caused any harassment.

This is welcome news for employers, who take on migrant workers. Until now, employers may have been reluctant to give this type of instruction, for fear of a race discrimination claim.

However the employer’s circumstances in this case were key to the policy being lawful.

So before implementing any blanket policy, a business should consider carefully its reasons for that policy and whether it can be justified in the particular working environment and circumstances.