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Dana El Farra began working as a Visitor Engagement Assistant (a VEA) for Securitas in 2018, providing visitor engagement services for London galleries including the National Gallery and Tate Modern. Working mostly in a customer-facing capacity providing information, selling and scanning tickets and responding to queries, Ms El Farra attempted to sue her bosses at Securitas after being asked if she could display the Kuwaiti flag on her work badge.

In the political correctness debate, Ms El Farra, who is British but has Kuwaiti parents, took offence to the request and “made it clear” she would object to “wearing any flag other than a British one”.

The request about displaying the badge in order to “identify your mother tongue with the appropriate flag” was made via email, but it was not a mandatory procedure, the tribunal heard.

The incident in question referred to when an Italian manager, whose first language was not English, emailed Ms El Farra and another Arabic-speaking colleague from Algeria called Faiza, asking: “What is your native country?”

But the tribunal heard Ms El Farra considered the request “racially motivated” because the email was only sent to her and Faiza, but we do not accept that.

The manager asked them because she was responsible for compiling a spreadsheet of languages spoken by the VEAs.

Ms El Farra had told her that she was born in Kuwait and spoke Arabic so she wanted to confirm the position. Likewise, she knew that Faiza was “from Algeria”.

The tribunal ruled this was instead simply “a clumsy way” of asking if she would be willing to wear a badge of a particular country.

She told the tribunal that in addition to perceiving the request as “racially motivated”, Ms El Farra felt she was treated “less favourably than those not of Arab ethnicity” in her requests for “flexible working”.

Ms El Farra, who describes herself as of Arab ethnicity, referred to comments from her colleagues as “racial micro-aggressions”.

After resigning from the position in November 2019, Ms El Farra noted her intentions to escalate her grievance to an employment tribunal.

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However her case was dismissed when the London Central tribunal ruled that the request was not racist.

Employment Judge Frances Spencer ruled that “these comments do not meet the threshold where they can be said to have violated her dignity, or to have created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for her”.

The Judge also said that: “Ms El Farra was sensitive about questions relating to her ethnicity.

“That is not a criticism. She is British and such questions can indeed be offensive.

“However, these questions need to be looked at in the context of Securitas’ workplace where employees were drawn from all over the world and may be regarded as attempts to get to know each other.”

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