Supermarket chain Asda has been ordered to pay a total of £27,750 in compensation to 37 Asian workers for racial discrimination. It transpired that a manager at the Lutterworth branch in Leicestershire called out their "foreign sounding names" over the public address system in an attempt to ensure that the company was not employing illegal immigrants. The manager asked the employees to produce documents to prove they had the right to work in Britain, despite the fact that several of the employees had been with the company for 18 years.
Asda has agreed to pay £750 compensation to each of the employees, however the GMB general union has accused management of failing to offer the employees the public apology they had been promised. Although companies are legally bound to ensure that workers are not employed illegally, government guidelines clearly forbid tactics such as those used by Asda.