The North's Fair Employment Tribunal has found that two Catholic hotel managers, who were sacked from their jobs in 2005, were subjected to unlawful discrimination on grounds of their religious and/or political beliefs.
The owners of Days Hotel, Andras House Ltd, which has a hotel near the loyalist Sandy Row in Belfast, were ordered to pay compensation of £16,110 (€21,550) to Riccardo Cafolla and £11,600 to Stephen Mooney, who had been threatened by the local UDA.
The tribunal decided that Mr Cafolla and Mr Mooney had been disciplined only after they had notified the chief executive of Andras House that they wished to instigate a grievance against the then general manager of Days Hotel. The grievance followed from "attacks of a sectarian nature on the hotel and its staff".
The tribunal was "satisfied that the attacks on the hotel were probably carried out by disgruntled employees/ex-employees from the Sandy Row area in retaliation to disciplinary action" taken by Mr Cafolla and Mr Mooney and the general manager.
It also found that "the attacks were sectarian in nature and directed particularly to Catholic employees of the hotel, including the claimants, because 'the word was on the street that a Catholic general manager was out to sack all the Protestants' ".
It was satisfied that following the general manager's "meeting with the local UDA, serious attacks on the hotel stopped", although comments continued to be made to Mr Mooney by one of the disciplined employees.
The tribunal was satisfied that senior managers did not wish to instigate disciplinary action against a particular employee as they feared further attacks. It ruled that the dismissal of the Catholic managers was "unjustified".
