Judgment approved by the court 11. Vaultex UK Ltd v Bialas The claimant contended that he might have been dismissed in order to reduce headcount, but the tribunal found that the respondent was, in fact, recruiting to increase headcount at the time. 12. The next sub-heading is “Findings relevant to contribution”. The tribunal observed at [44] that these findings of fact played no role in determining the actual beliefs of the Respondent at the time of dismissal or the band of reasonable responses. The tribunal then said this at [45]: “As I have noted, the ‘joke’ posted by the Claimant was racist. The Claimant did not at the time realise it was racist. The Claimant did not understand that the associations of Jewish people with ‘grabbing coins’ was racist. He had not thought of this before. He had associated it with Jewish people being good at business. Whether the automatic association of Jewish people with being good at business is itself anti-Semitic is a matter of debate which would appear to veer into the political. It is certainly capable of being viewed as anti-Semitic, given that the ascription of any specific characteristic to a whole people is necessarily based on prejudice.” 13. The tribunal opened its conclusions on liability with a finding that the principal reason for dismissal was the claimant’s conduct in that he had “posted a racist joke on the company platform, which had offended at least one fellow member of staff. This was misconduct which violated the respondent’s policies, in particular its zero tolerance approach to racism”. Mr Babbage genuinely believed that the claimant had committed misconduct: “against the background of the respondent’s EDI policies and, in particular, its zero tolerance policy in respect of discriminatory language”. There were reasonable grounds for the belief. The conduct was admitted. The claimant sought to explain the conduct, but accepted that it was a breach of the respondent’s procedures. 14. The tribunal continued: “49. The Respondent failed in a significant respect in the investigation. The Respondent concluded that the joke in the Claimant’s post was taken from a ‘tech’ section of the joke website. In fact, it had failed to consider the Claimant’s forceful proposal that the Respondent should investigate his internet history to prove that it in fact came from the ‘clean’ section of the website. This was relevant because the source of the joke had an impact on how Mr Babbage viewed the Claimant’s credibility, and on how seriously it viewed the misconduct. If the joke had come from the ‘clean’ section of the website then this would have materially affected how bad the Claimant’s conduct would have seemed, because it would mean he had taken steps to avoid posting something inappropriate in the workplace. In the disciplinary hearing the Claimant could have shown the joke in the ‘clean’ section of the website, if he had wanted to. © EAT 2024 Page 7 [2024] EAT 19