[BretLudwig]

How I nearly lost my business after refusing to hire a Muslim hair stylist
who wouldn't show her hair

By Natasha Courtenay-Smith
Last updated at 11:08 AM on 18th June 2008



"It seems too lunatic to be true. But here a hair salon boss reveals how
she was driven to the brink of ruin - and forced to pay £4,000 for 'hurt
feelings' - after refusing to hire a Muslim stylist who wouldn't show her
hair at work

For Sarah Desrosiers, meeting Bushra Noah was not a moment in her life
that she would describe as especially memorable.

Not only was it brief - lasting little more than ten minutes - but it
was rapidly obvious to Sarah that Bushra was not the person for the junior
stylist position she was trying to fill at her hairdressing salon.

Sarah's reasoning? Quite simply that Bushra, a Muslim who wears a
headscarf for religions reasons, had made it clear she would not be
removing the garment even while at work.


Sarah Desrosiers says she did nothing wrong by not employing Bushra Noah
and would have done the same if an employee refused to remove a baseball
cap

Sarah felt that a job requirement of any hairdresser was that the
stylist's hair would provide clients with a showcase of different looks.
Especially one working in a salon such as hers, which specialises in
alternative cuts and colours.

Yet the ten minutes during which Sarah's world collided with Bushra's has
resulted in an extraordinary employment battle, in which she was accused
of 'direct' and 'indirect' discrimination.


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For a year, Sarah has been facing financial ruin, due to a compensation
claim for £34,000 brought by Bushra, 19, who has maintained she is due
that figure after being turned down for a job at the Wedge salon in
London's King's Cross.

In the event, the tribunal ruled this week that while Bushra's claim of
direct discrimination failed, her claim for indirect discrimination had
succeeded.

Sarah has therefore been ordered to pay £4,000 compensation by way of
'injury to feelings'.

Although this is a smaller sum than she'd feared she might have to hand
over, Sarah, 32, is still outraged.

'I am a small business and the bottom line is that this is not a woman who
worked for me,' says Sarah.


Bushra Noah says that Sarah Desrosiers 'hurt her feelings' by not
employing her after a ten minute interview

'She is simply someone I met for a job interview, who, for a host of
reasons, was not right for the job. I cannot see how she deserves
£4,000.

'As for the notion that I've injured her feelings - well, people's
feelings get injured every day. I dread to think the sorts of things that
people will try to claim injured feelings for now that this precedent has
been set.'

In its ruling, the tribunal said it was 'satisfied that Bushra was not
treated less favourably than Sarah would have treated any woman who,
whether Muslim or not, wears a hair covering at all times when at work'.

Accordingly, the claim of direct discrimination failed.

But with regard to the issue of indirect discrimination, they found that
Sarah had pursued a 'legitimate aim - that aim being to promote the
image of the business'.

However, the burden of proof was on Sarah to prove that her means of
achieving that legitimate aim was proportionate.

She was not able to prove her contention that employing someone with a
headscarf would have the negative impact on her business's stylistic
integrity that she feared.

Since the judgment, Bushra, who is of Syrian descent and has worn a
headscarf since she was 13, has, so far at least, chosen not to comment.

But, speaking last year, she admitted she had attended 25 interviews for
hairdressing jobs without success.

But Sarah, she told the tribunal, had upset her the most.

She said: 'I felt so down and got so depressed. I thought: "If I am not
going to defend myself, who is?" Hairdressing has been what I've wanted to
do ever since I was at high school.


Bushra Noah (left) and Sarah Derosiers (right) arriving at court during
the employment tribunal battle

'This has ruined my ambitions. Wearing a headscarf is essential to my
beliefs.'

Bushra had a job in a salon in London, where her tasks included cutting
hair, highlighting, tinting and perming, before she left to get married in
Syria in 2006.

But on her return to Britain, she was unable to find work.

She has given up her ambitions to become a hairdresser and is studying
travel and tourism at Hammersmith and West London College while working
part-time in a shop.

At the tribunal, Bushra was asked if Sarah had made derogatory remarks
about her headscarf.

She replied: 'She did not. She just asked me if I wore it all the time, or
whether I'd take it off.'

Although Bushra is believed to have been acting alone, in the past similar
cases have been championed by Muslim traditionalist groups.

In 2006, the Law Lords overturned a court ruling that teenager Shabina
Begum's human rights were violated when she was banned from wearing full
Islamic dress at school.


Sarah in her salon - Wedge - located in north London says that the
discrimination case against her almost ruined her business

The extremist Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir later admitted that it had
'advised her'.

Meanwhile, Sarah Desrosiers is wondering how to raise the £4,000 she has
been ordered to pay Bushra. She has spent her savings on her legal battle
and simply has no money left.

'I am a one-woman band, and am already in debt due to the set-up costs of
opening my own salon,' says Sarah. 'I dread to think how many haircuts I'm
going to have to do to earn the £4,000 I have to pay Bushra. This has,
without doubt, been the worst year of my life.'

Such a messy set of circumstances, let alone the strain of having the case
bought against her, was certainly not what Sarah expected when she started
out on her career aged 17.

From the outset, she had grand ambitions, telling her mother that she
would one day have her own salon.

'Even back then, I realised how important your own hair is to the job,'
says Sarah. 'I went into hairdressing a rather plain brunette, but within
a few weeks I had a bright red crop.

'I wanted to provide clients with inspiration through my own hair. Whether
they're in a conventional High Street salon, or something slightly
different like my salon, customers expect to see the stylists with hair
that is on trend, striking and can give them ideas for their own look.'

In 1997, Sarah got a job at a salon on London's Portobello Road, where she
remained for almost a decade.

In March 2006, feeling ready to spread her wings, she wrote a business
plan, secured a loan and invested £5,000 of her savings into the lease on
a small salon on Caledonian Road.

She named it Wedge, and planned to specialise in 'urban and edgy' cuts,
rather like the cerise colour she often dyes her own hair.

'I'd never felt as proud as I did on the day I picked up the keys to my
salon,' says Sarah.
'I was prepared to put my heart and soul into my business in order to make
ends meet, and for the first few months, I worked 12 hours a day, six days
a week, all by myself.

'I barely saw daylight, but I didn't mind because I was fulfilling my
ambition.

'Of course, there were a few nerve-racking moments, such as when another
salon opened a few doors away. But that is part of owning your own
business, and I felt proud of all I was achieving.'

By March 2007, the business was doing so well that Sarah needed to take on
another stylist. To minimise her overheads, she decided the best way to do
this would be by renting out a chair in her salon to an experienced
stylist - who would take a share of her profits - and employ a junior
to work for both of them.

Sarah received dozens of applications for the junior position, one of
which was from Bushra Noah.

'Her CV didn't stand out because I was looking for someone who lived
locally - something I'd specified in the advert so that I could call
them in as and when required - and she lived several miles away in
Acton,' says Sarah.

'One day she rang up to see if I'd got her CV and begged me for an
interview. I told her I had concerns about where she lived, but she
sounded so desperate that I agreed she could come in for a chat.'

A few days later, Bushra duly arrived at the salon.

'I have to say I didn't take to her,' says Sarah. 'She waltzed into the
salon and hung up her coat as though she already had the job.

'Naturally, I noticed her headscarf. But I presumed that, as she's a
hairdresser, she'd take if off when she was working. In 16 years, I've
never known any stylist cover their hair with a headscarf. And this
particular headscarf came all the way down to her eyebrows and covered her
entire hairline.'

Sarah broached the subject with Bushra, who said she would not be removing
the garment.

After ten minutes, with the interview complete, Sarah said she would come
back to Bushra about the vacancy.

'As she left, Bushra turned to me and said that she'd been turned down for
jobs before,' says Sarah. 'And I admit I thought: "Well, what do you
expect?"

'It was not a religious matter. If she'd come in wearing a baseball cap
and saying she wouldn't take it off for work, then she wouldn't have got
the job either.'

One morning in the second week of June 2007, an innocuous white envelope
landed on Sarah's doormat. It contained a letter saying that she was being
sued for £15,000 for indirect and direct discrimination by Bushra Noah.

This, the letter stated, related to compensation for injury to her
feelings and lost earnings. Later, that figure was increased to £34,000.

'I read it and re-read it and stood there dumbfounded,' says Sarah.
'I remembered Bushra, and I guessed straight away that the claim related
to the headscarf. In my mind I was saying "But I wasn't discriminating,
it's just a part of the job", over and over again.

'I dialled the number at the top of the letter and was told I needed to
get a solicitor, but that because I worked, I wasn't entitled to Legal
Aid. I thought: "This is it - my business is over." I was devastated.'

Using her savings of £2,000, Sarah employed a lawyer who helped her draft
a statement about her meeting with Bushra.

But with his fees at £280 an hour, she knew she couldn't afford to fight
a satisfactory legal battle. Her parents - her mother is a nurse, and
her father is retired - weren't in a position to help her out
financially either.

'I was at my wits' end, and I had no idea how I was going to pay for my
legal fees,' says Sarah.

'I was virtually being accused of racism, which is ridiculous. I've cut
the hair of people from all walks of life, including transsexuals, and you
can hardly run an alternative salon if you are prejudiced.'

Help came when a friend tipped off a reporter about what was happening,
and Sarah's case gained publicity, first locally, then nationally. Since
then, she has received support from hundreds of people in the hairdressing
industry, including black celebrity stylist Errol Douglas.

Still, the wave of support did little to ease the stress as she fought to
clear her name.

'For months, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I felt as though my whole
life was on hold. All I could see was that I'd be forced into bankruptcy
and lose my business.'

In the course of preparing for her trial, Sarah estimates she has lost
£40,000 of her salon's annual income.

She also faced a further blow when it emerged that Bushra had increased
the figure to £34,000 to compensate for hate mail she had received
following Press coverage of the trial.

In March, Sarah faced a three- day employment tribunal, and endured four
hours of cross-examination.

'I managed to defend myself and not cry, but it was incredibly difficult,'
she says. 'I'd even had to ask my accountant, who is a Muslim, and another
Muslim friend to write letters confirming that I am not racist. The whole
experience was so humiliating and, most importantly, unnecessary.'

'I kept thinking: "I've worked hard all my life - how can it be possible
that someone can come into my shop, talk to me for ten minutes and then sue
me for £34,000? How is that possibly fair?".'

As she reels from the verdict, Sarah is contemplating her next move. While
part of her is tempted to pay, simply to close the door on this unpleasant
episode, she also feels she should fight to clear her name.

Her lawyers are advising her on whether or not she can appeal.

'Because of this there will be a black mark against my name for the rest
of my life,' she says. 'I feel I have not done anything wrong, and this is
a terrible price to pay for a meeting that lasted ten minutes.'

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