Employer has to pay $14.5K to Black former waitress after she was sent home from work over braids

Lettia McNickle, a victim of workplace discrimination in Montreal, Canada, won the lawsuit she filed in 2015 against Madison’s New York Bar and Grill and is expected to get $14,500.

In November 2014, McNickle, who worked in the previously mentioned restaurant, went with braids. However, her then-boss Roulla Kyriacou sent her home.

“She took me aside personally and told me she did not want that kind of hairstyle in her establishment. Now that today it actually came to this [decision], I feel proud,” said McNickle while holding back tears.

Apart from that, the victim said that she hoped all restaurants and companies know that they shouldn’t do such “gender and racial” acts of discrimination and that if they do it, they won’t get away with it.

PREVIOUS ISSUES

McNickle, who started working at the steakhouse in October 2014 and was fired in March 2015, experienced a couple of issues with Kyriacou before taking matters to court.

One of the things she remembered was that, following the store’s rules, she wore pants for work. However, Kyriacou told her to put on skirts “above the knee.” A couple of weeks later, McNickle arrived at the restaurant with her hair cornrowed, and her boss sent her home, too.

Even though she changed her hairstyle, she kept the braids and went to work the following day. Kyriacou allegedly went “ballistic.” “Publicly — in front of customers, in front of employees — embarrassing me and telling me that, my hairstyle, she doesn’t want it here and that the managers didn’t give her message properly,” recalled McNickle.

THE OUTCOME

Kyriacou kept insisting that she was not racist and that she has hired people of all backgrounds. However, after reviewing the case, the Quebec Human Rights Commission ruled that Kyriacou must pay $14,500 in damages.

If McNickle’s former employer refuses to do so by December 21, the case will proceed to the Human Rights Tribunal.

ANOTHER RACIAL INCIDENT

Kyriacou is not the only person involved in a problem over racial actions. An enraged Dallas mother is asking for a school staff to be fired from her son’s school after the woman allegedly called the five-year-old a “monkey” and related the word to his physical appearance.

The incident happened in front of Brittany Miner, the mother, at the Edna Rowe Elementary School. The boy was jumping and playing around when a teacher approached them and said, “oh he’s running around, he’s like a little monkey.”

Offended but willing to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt, Miner asked the woman not to call her son like that, but she insisted, “Oh look at his little face,” a comment Miner believes is offensive and an apparent jab at her son’s skin color.