A construction company is appealing a court judgement that it only hired black Bermudians to justify its work permit applications.Apex Construction Management Limited lawyer Jai Pachai confirmed yesterday that the company is appealing the decision by the Human Rights Commission.A board of inquiry ruled in February that Bermudian carpenter Pernell Grant had been discriminated against by the construction firm and that it had no real intention of promoting or training black Bermudians.Said Mr Pachai: “Basically the grounds [of appeal] are that the board exceeded its jurisdiction and failed to properly apply the relevant sections of the Act.”Mr Grant worked for Apex from September 2006 until April 2009.He filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission in 2008 listing three respondents: Apex Limited, Andrea Battiston, Mr Grant’s boss and the company’s operations manager, and Kevin Mason, the site superintendent and second-in-command.Mr Grant alleged that he was offered employment on terms less favourable than those offered to Polish and Canadian contract workers.He further claimed that he was denied the opportunity to work overtime and suffered reprisals based on staged or false complaints.The board’s findings were laid out in a 15-page ruling: “The respondents had absolutely no intention of training or promoting Bermudians generally, or black Bermudians in particular.“We are under no doubt at all that the respondents wanted ‘black faces in the hole’, that is black workers on the site in order to support their claims for work permits for contract workers.”However the board found that Mr Grant’s complaints about not being given overtime opportunities may have been caused by his insistence on being paid one-and-a-half times the base wage for work beyond 40 hours while other workers received “straight time”.A writ was filed against the board’s ruling on March 7.Mr Grant could not be reached yesterday for comment.