Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

A Supermarket Employee

A Supermarket

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 39 of the Redundancy Payments Act, 1967

CA-00010185-001

13/03/2017

The complainant commenced work with the respondent in December 2003.

The respondent had initiated a number of possible redundancy schemes of which the complainant sought to avail.

However, she was not selected and complains accordingly.

The complainant initially was ‘in scope’ for redundancy in 2014 but was deemed not to be eligible.

At that time it was suggested that an error in relation to her date of birth may have played some part in this. She also says that she was given only twenty-four hours to indicate her acceptance of the terms of the scheme.

The complainant has been on long term sick leave since December 23^rd 2014.

In April 2015 a fresh scheme was intimated within the respondent company and rolled out over a period throughout the country which became applicable in her region in November 2015.

While she received no formal communication she had been told by her local manager that she was not eligible. Shortly after this she was sent her P45.

After the hearing the complainant made an additional submission about eligibility based on the complainant’s illness absence on the basis that it could not be located in the company handbook.

The respondent disputes the entire validity of the complaint and says it is ‘misconceived’. There has been no breach of the Redundancy Payments Act

Under its scheme there was no entitlement to redundancy. The complainant cannot bring a complaint under the Act to require the respondent to grant her redundancy as at no stage was her position made redundant.

In addition she did not meet one of the eligibility requirements. Employees on long term sick leave were not automatically excluded from the scheme and were contacted with a view to a discussion about their position. In that regard they were required to indicate a return to work date.

When the matter of her eligibility for redundancy was raised by her local HR Manager in October 2015 she was told that as her sick leave was greater than six months and no date for a return to work could be identified she was not eligible for the scheme

While the respondent cannot explain why the complainant was sent her P45 she continued to ge regarded as an employee and was the subject of specific representations by her union in relation to the option of early retirement on the grounds of ill-health.

She applied for and accepted this in August 2016.

The respondent says that to be eligible for a payment under the Redundancy Payments Acts the complainant’s role would have had to be made redundant. Invitations to express interest in a voluntary scheme are merely that and occur several stages before a decision to make a position redundant is made.

Put simply, as will be clear for the submissions above there was no redundancy in this case. The complainant may have wished to be considered for redundancy but on the facts here there is no entitlement to be made redundant.

It must also be regarded as odd that following her acceptance of the arrangement to retire on ill-health grounds negotiated with the respondent by her trade union she continued to pursue this totally misconceived complaint.

In any event the net point is that there was no redundancy and no entitlement to a redundancy payment and the complaint fails. In relation to the additional submission made by the complainant on eligibility I accept the respondent’s evidence regarding eligibility for any scheme and the complaint fails.

For the reasons set out above I do not uphold complaint CA-00010185-001 and it fails.