ADJUDICATION OFFICER DECISION

Adjudication Decision Reference: ADJ-00006049

Dispute for Resolution:

Date of Adjudication Hearing: 08/02/2017

Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer: Pat Brady

Procedure:

In accordance with Section 41(4) of the Workplace Relations Act, 2015 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 felt that due to the increasing level of her responsibilities she should have been promoted to a higher grade in 2006 but the respondent failed to acknowledge her case for regrading.

Following that for a number of years she carried out a number of extra responsibilities and duties which should have been recognised as a basis for promotion to a higher grade.

In 2015 instead of being finally promoted, many of those duties were removed from her.

She now seeks to be re-graded to a named grade in the respondent grading structure backdated to 2006 as an acknowledgment of the amount of responsibilities and workload carried out since 2006.

Secondly, she complains about delays in the processing of a grievance she submitted in 2015 and says had to wait more than a year to have a grievance hearing, which was eventually heard on June 8^th 2016 and she was not afforded an appeal from the initial decision.

Respondent’s Submission and Presentation:

The respondent, which is a very large employer, has well established mechanisms for the processing of upgrading claims, and indeed from which the complainant has benefitted in the past as she made good progress through the structure.

A claimant for upgrading must be put forward by their immediate manager to the Grading committee which must believe it to be objectively justified on the basis of the grading criteria.

In the period since 2006 there are various explanations for the delay. In 2007 the complainant did not seek her manager’s support to trigger the process, in 2008 and 2009 public service pay policy restrictions on cost increasing claims which govern the respondent played a part and the grading process was inactive until 2012 when it was re-instated.

The complainant was not recommended by her manager for an upgrade at that point and made no complaint at the time.

In 2014/15 her department was restructured and the complainant moved to a new role. A number of the changes in her role which she now complains about were made at her own request, some of them related to overwork.

The 2015 grievance essentially related to the failure of the respondent to promote the complainant nine years earlier. But the primary contributor to the delay was the failure of the complainant to specify precisely the nature of her grievance and to supply additional details when requested.

In respect of her complaint that she was denied an appeal there is no provision for an appeal within the respondent machinery but her case had been heard by the Head of the HR department.

Findings and Conclusions

The outcome letter from the complainant’s review by the HR Director (HRD) was dated July 21^st 2016. In the course of it the author reviews the minutes of the ‘grading’ committee which met on August 30^th 2006, and which rejected the complainant’s claim for an upgrading.

While this is evidence of some diligence on the part of the HRD it will strike any observer as very odd that a grievance of such vintage should still remain current within the range and scope of the procedures.

It is difficult to imagine any grievance that would remain active, and unprocessed for such a long time.

It is even more difficult in this case given the subject matter of the grievance. In effect, the complainant’s grievance was that the grading committee failed to upgrade her nine years earlier and/or that her supervisor failed to promote her cause.

It looks suspiciously like an attempt to bypass the respondent’s grading system by forcing a review of her grading status through the grievance machinery. There was confusion about the precise nature of the grievance; the complainant’s case not being helped by the union characterising these requests for particulars as the imposition of ‘conditions’. The union would have been better advised to provide the clarification sought as by failing to do so it contributed to the delay.

In large organisations with hierarchical grading structures, re-grading normally takes place following some, system-based assessment process rather than collective bargaining or negotiation. This is dome in order to preserve equity in in the system and to ensure that the rewards and the levels of responsibility are matched.

The complainant understands the system well. She is employed in the HR department and has been through it on previous occasions; sometimes successfully but on the last occasion she was not (in 2006).

It is difficult to see how a person can come seeking a remedy for any grievance which occurred in 2006. Further, I can see no grounds for an adjudicator substituting himself for the grading process which remains available to the complainant subject to compliance with its requirements.

Recommendation: 

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

I do not uphold the complaint CA-00008360-001 which is not well-founded.

Dated:   5^th May 2017