Social worker claims reverse discrimination

AN IRISH social worker yesterday claimed he was sacked by a London council because he was racially discriminated against in favour of black and Asian workers.

Patrick Reynolds told an industrial tribunal he was dismissed as a community development officer with Southwark Council after being treated differently from Afro-Caribbean colleagues.

Mr Reynolds, 48, from Wood Green, north London, represented himself at the hearing in Ashford, Kent, where he is claiming unfair dismissal and racial discrimination.

He said that after restructuring of the equalities department in 1996 he was left without a job.

He was turned down for two posts and was not offered other suitable alternatives but other workers in the same department were spared the loss of jobs or redeployed elsewhere.

Mr Reynolds said: "I was discriminated against because of my Irishness. I was quite clearly treated differently from other members of staff. In my unit one Asian chap was left entirely out of the restructuring. An Afro-Caribbean woman was given another job, an Asian woman was also left out of the reorganisation and another Asian chap was offered alternative employment."

Mr Reynolds said he believed score sheets completed at his interview for one job had been tampered with to "deliberately" fail him. He also said that after leaving Southwark Council personnel officers wrecked his chances of another job with Hackney Council by providing unfair references.

Mr Reynolds said outside the tribunal: "I was the only non-British citizen and non-coloured person in my unit who lost his job." Mr Reynolds, born in Longford, Ireland, in 1950, moved to London in 1974.

The tribunal is expected to last four days.