A UK worker has lost his case against a Chinese telecoms company that he sued for race discrimination after claiming that 49 workers in Basingstoke were axed and replaced with Chinese nationals.
Judeson Peter, a customer support engineer who was paid £48,000 per annum by Huawei Technologies, accused the firm of making him redundant because he was British. But today a Southampton-based employment tribunal ruled that he had not been unfairly dismissed and that the telco had followed a fair and legal process.
Huawei said in a statement that the firm was a "responsible and fair" employer that was committed to the "equal treatment of all our employees, providing the same career opportunities to all our employees globally".
"We are committed to expanding our business both in the UK and across Europe. Currently 75% of our 650 UK workforce is recruited locally and we will continue with growth plans to attract new talent to the company," it added.
According to the Daily Mail, Peter had told a Southampton-based employment tribunal earlier in the week that there was “clearly” an increasing number of Chinese staff working at the telco. He claimed that it had transferred 342 workers to the UK over the last three years, while 49 British and non-British employees had lost their job over the same period.
Huawei has its headquarters in Guandong, China, employs 110,000 personnel worldwide and made a profit of $3.64 billion last year.
Peter, who alleged unfair dismissal, breach of contract and discrimination on the grounds of race and age, said: “A large number of Chinese employees were joining the workforce in 2009 at the same time that I was being made redundant. I believe I could have done these roles.”
Far more non-Chinese than Chinese employees had been selected for redundancy, he claimed. For example, while 30 non-Chinese engineers had lost their jobs, not one Chinese national had, he alleged.
Peter, who started working for Huawei in April 2006 and was made redundant in May 2009, also accused the firm’s HR manager of sending an email dated 21 April, 2009, stating that expat employees were exempt from redundancy.
Selection criteria
“This is a clear racial discrimination against non-Chinese employees as most expats are Chinese. Home Office guidelines state employers are not to treat migrant workers more or less favourably than resident workers,” he attested.
Peter believed that he had been “unfairly pre-selected” for redundancy due to his age and the fact that he was not Chinese.
But Tony Cooper, who represented Huawei, claimed that the figures quoted by Peter were unreliable and did not reflect either the number of visas granted or the number of Chinese workers who had come to work in the UK.
He added that the expats were not employed by the UK operation but rather by a Chinese holding company and that the entire entity had been “affected by economic circumstances and changes in the organisation of their competitors”.
A Huawei spokesman subsequently added that the firm had had to make a series of redundancies in 2009, which resulted in 25% of British workers and 32% of Chinese employees losing their jobs. “The fact that a higher percentage of Chinese workers than British were made redundant shows that Huawei in no way prioritised Chinese employees,” he said.
The spokesman also claimed that, at the time, Huawei had begun a “fair review, strictly following selection criteria feedback”, but Peter “scored the lowest number of points, so unfortunately had to be made redundant”.
As a result, the telco believed that “the process followed was fair and in line with the approach other companies operating in the UK would take to restructuring”, the spokesman added.
