ADJUDICATION OFFICER DECISION 

Adjudication Decision Reference: ADJ-00002643

Dispute for Resolution:  

 Date of Adjudication Hearing: 20/07/2016

Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer: Pat Brady

Procedure: 

In accordance with Section 41(4) of the Workplace Relations Act, following the referral of the dispute to me by the Director General, I inquired into the dispute and gave the parties an opportunity to be heard by me and to present to me any evidence relevant to the dispute.

Attendance at Hearing: 

Complainant’s Submission and Presentation:

The complainant had referred a matter related to mainly health and safety matters. The complaint had been couched in only very general terms. These related to the provision of certain protective equipment. The complainant said that he had given the complaint to his local union representative for processing and believed that they had been passed on to the Operations Manager.

Respondent’s Submission and Presentation: 

The respondent said that it had no prior indication as to what the subject of the hearing was to be and was not certain how it could engage with the matter in the circumstances. The complainant was no longer employed by them and the Adjudicator’s decision in an unfair dismissal claim by the complainant in this case had just come to hand upholding the decision to terminate his employment.

It also regarded all the issues referred to as being local grievances which should have been processed at local level through the company’s grievance machinery.

It denied any knowledge of a formal complaint and said that the Operations Manager was not aware of it either.

Findings and Conclusions

I find that the issues raised in this case are low level grievances which should only have been referred to the WRC on conclusion of the internal workplace procedures. They had not even commenced their journey through these procedures, much less exhausting them. This is possibly in some measure due to the complainant’s no longer being employed by the company. 

That said an onus falls on a complainant to take the necessary steps to see that his own complaints were properly lodged and were being processed. The complainant was very vague on this point and I conclude that these grievances were not lodged with the company.

The matter only arises again should the complainant find himself employed by the respondent following a successful appeal of the decision in his Unfair Dismissals case which resulted in his re-instatement.

Decision:

Section 41(4) of the Workplace Relations Act 2015 requires that I make a decision in relation to the complaint(s)/dispute(s) in accordance with the relevant redress provisions under Schedule 6 of that Act.

In the event of the re-instatement of the complainant, I recommend that, should he wish to do so, the complaints should be formally and properly lodged in writing within the company’s grievance machinery and processed in the normal way.

Dated:   07/11/2016