Bank manager fired for using N word awarded up to $637,000 in damages

Carl Borg-Neal was sacked by the British bank Lloyds in 2021 after upsetting an instructor when he used the offensive slur during an online class discussing race in the workplace. 

Lloyds ‘went too far’

The offending statement took place during a segment of the class that examined intent vs effect in racially charged language, according to a published ruling.

Borg-Neal had asked the trainer of the class how he should handle a situation when someone from an ethnic minority uses a word that might be considered offensive if used by someone not within that minority.

When the instructor didn’t respond, Borg-Neal followed up by saying: “The most common example being use of the N-word in the black community.” However, he used the full word rather than the abbreviation.

Lloyds accepted that Borg-Neal acted without malice, had apologized immediately after using the word, and that the question was fair, but determined he should have known better than to use the slur in a professional environment. 

The trainer of the seminar also took several days off following the incident, encouraging Lloyds to take its decision to dismiss the manager.

Last year, an employment tribunal ruled that Lloyds went too far when it decided to fire Borg-Neal for using the slur and that it didn’t need to dismiss him to show its stance on offensive language. 

“If the Bank wanted to make a point, it could have given the claimant a warning and more training, as he suggested himself,” the tribunal wrote.

The tribunal added that Borg-Neal’s dyslexia can “lead him to keep reformulating questions and to ‘spurt’ things out before he loses his train of thought.” 

He now stands to receive up to $637,000 in damages, his lawyers…