How to handle racism in the workplace?

throwaway675

I'm writing on behalf of a friend who has recently moved to Northern Ireland to work as a nurse. She has been working there for a little more than a month now and has already encountered problems with other members of staff. These staff are her colleagues, she hasn't had any problems related to management and others above her, just her professional equals.

This is all second hand information but I trust my friend's account of her experience and know her not to exaggerate. She has had a problem with one particular colleague. They've had to work together several times due to the rota. Each time working together this person has been uncooperative and hostile towards my friend. Since she's only been there several weeks she still needs to ask the person working with her for advice related to procedures and protocols in this particular place of work. The person either doesn't help or else speaks too quickly leaving my friend confused. The latter is a problem any foreign person is going to encounter when working in Northern Ireland. It takes time to adjust to their dialect/accent.

On multiple occasions my friend has been requested by management to be somewhere else. The problematic colleague has requested that she decline and lie in order to avoid leaving her duties at the principal work area with patients. This is confusing to my friend because she doesn't know/understand the hierarchy within the institution so she feels conflicted about what to do.

There is a general attitude of hostility with curt and abrupt responses to anything; this is generally bringing down the mood of the working environment. The other day she overheard this colleague talking to another person in the lunch room. She said something along the lines of “I'm going to talk to the manager about changing areas because they're sending staff from God knows what countries”

My friend has already talked about this to the head nurse who is also an ethnic minority. She has sympathised with her and explained that she also faced hostility due to her background. The head nurse is not the same person as her immediate manager and so far nothing has been said to this person. My friend is slightly afraid of broaching the subject because the immediate manager and the problematic colleague seem to be on good terms.

It's difficult to know how to go about solving this. The colleague is clearly passive aggressive to her and it may or may not be related to her nationality. However from the overheard comment it does seem to be a problem with the colleague's attitude of minorities in the workplace.

Any advice?

Tl;dr – Foreign nurse living in Northern Ireland has an uncooperative colleague. Seems to be due to bigotism.

Bepolite

Exposing my own bigotism here but move away from the North would be my suggestion. Due to various cultural factors it's twenty - thirty years behind the rest of the British Isles. That's not to say the vast majority of people won't be grand it's just that IMHO you're more likely to encounter people with some pretty backward views.

She seems to be handling it the best way she can, try and deal with it informally as far as possible. As for the speaking too quickly, as you've said she'll have to adjust. It's a difficult accent at the best of times and I'm sure the other person is in no way helping.

TL;DR you're going to come across arseholes in every walk of life.

Cd_doe

Can you highlight the part where she was discriminated against because of her race???

It sounds to me like it's not racism but just the fact that person is a pr*c k / bully

It's hard when your new but she will have to stand up for herself. A polite fu*k off to the fella with the bad attitude would be a start.

ozexpat

i'm new but this seems to be well worn topic with people so thought wud post on here

so we're in <ozzie city> on work team day out, and i'm already annoyed that we're forced to spend hours walking around the city in the heat answering clues, and the fact is clearly tailored to people who know about the city so am completely useless in the team......irritation levels to be fair are rising steadily..

we have a wannabe team lead who's leading us around the place answering b4 anyone has even looked at clue..
same guy has replied to the sort of groupy joke emails at work where he always tends to make some sort of irish remark which can rankle a bit coz don't know him well enough sort of thing...

then we on the street i remark that I am pretty surplus to team requirements which maybe was a bit complaining but was fair comment and was said jokily.
am cut off by the team leader wannabe who goes :
"REALLY do u want questions on best irish pubs in dublin?"
hard to describe the tone but was basically was saying to me
1. shut up you fool
2. you irish only know about drinking anyways

was very annoyed bit my lip then 40 minutes l8r more walking around i was saying something and happened to be the number 33 in it.
suddenly same guy cuts me off starts laughing his head off goes....
" Say 33 again go on I want to hear you say it!!!"

honestly wanted to knock him out.
came home explained to wife oz who thought he was being a prick but lucky i bit my tongue to avoid hassle@work, i had in fact responded rather angrily explaining why they're aren't any irish theme pubs in dublin...

anyways 2 questions on this->
1. Was he being racist here?
2. are we irish more prone to put up with it then other nations?

I mean to be fair i haven't encountered that much here but reckon there has been incidents, once at work when there was "irish jokes" sent around to whole office which was of the punchline the irish are stupid variety.
I wonder if another nationality would hae put up with that and just laughed it off as i did...and i think maybe in general we put up with the irish sterotypes too easily ( maybe coz we feel we sterotype other people ourselves alot lol)

or maybe i just too touchy about all this... e.g. the guy was just trying to be funny and doing it lamely

btw on above hard to know from description but sounds like racism to me

Mrs OBumble

Technically it's racism. Low-level, but still racism. (Though in fairness, any immigrant will always struggle with quizzes etc in a new country for a few years - I know I did when I came to Ireland.)

But if you google racist incidents in Australia, you'll find far worse and aimed at different people.

You'll also find that Australia has a tolerance for things that some other countries wouldn't (eg disabled kid born to a NZ citizen in Australia ... doesn't qualify for Oz citizenship 'cos the mother isn't a citizen, so doesn't qualify for disability services ... but can't leave the country to get them in NZ 'cos the estranged father has a court order).

I have no idea about Australia's laws re harassment in the workplace, racist remarks etc - and doubt that you'll find must specific advice about that here.

Mmmm .. I'm tempted to move this to the Living Abroad forum - what do you think?

the_monkey

Bepolite wrote: »

Exposing my own bigotism here but move away from the North would be my suggestion. Due to various cultural factors it's twenty - thirty years behind the rest of the British Isles. That's not to say the vast majority of people won't be grand it's just that IMHO you're more likely to encounter people with some pretty backward views.

She seems to be handling it the best way she can, try and deal with it informally as far as possible. As for the speaking too quickly, as you've said she'll have to adjust. It's a difficult accent at the best of times and I'm sure the other person is in no way helping.

TL;DR you're going to come across arseholes in every walk of life.

Bang on , the North seems really behind with regard to this, sure Creationism is still poplular up there ffs !!

ozexpat

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Technically it's racism. Low-level, but still racism. (Though in fairness, any immigrant will always struggle with quizzes etc in a new country for a few years - I know I did when I came to Ireland.)

But if you google racist incidents in Australia, you'll find far worse and aimed at different people.

You'll also find that Australia has a tolerance for things that some other countries wouldn't (eg disabled kid born to a NZ citizen in Australia ... doesn't qualify for Oz citizenship 'cos the mother isn't a citizen, so doesn't qualify for disability services ... but can't leave the country to get them in NZ 'cos the estranged father has a court order).

I have no idea about Australia's laws re harassment in the workplace, racist remarks etc - and doubt that you'll find must specific advice about that here.

Mmmm .. I'm tempted to move this to the Living Abroad forum - what do you think?

thank you....don't mind but was just looking for peoples opinions on it really..

i get on well with everyone@work+know its best not to rock the boat and ain't a big deal really...