Representatives

SIPTU

IBEC

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 13 of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969

CA-00008429-001

28/11/2016

The respondent has employed the complainant as a processor since March 1999. The dispute concerns the severity of a verbal warning imposed on the complainant on foot of an incident which occurred on the 29^th of June 2016. The parties made written and oral submission to the hearing.

The complainant submits that the discipline imposed arising from the incident of the 29^th of June 2016 which entailed damage to a part arising from accidental programming of a machine. The error was immediately rectified thereafter brought to the attention of management by the complainant and the part was reworked. This incident followed a separate incident on the 16^th of June 2016 which was investigated and closed without recourse to disciplinary action.

The respondent erred in associating the two incidents. The findings arising from the incident of the 29^th of June state “we accept your response that this was a genuine mistake attributable to human error and feel that you have indicated a genuine remorse with this error having happened.” In fact that was the only reference to the incident of the 29^th inst. in the investigation report, the remainder of which refers to the incident of the 16^th inst. which had already been investigated and closed.

The disciplinary and grievance procedure provides that “minor disciplinary problems may arise from time to time. These may be resolved informally by positive coaching and advice by the employees Team Leader/Manager and are normally outside the scope of this procedure”. The matter could and should have been resolved informally particularly in view of the complainant’s exemplary work record over a period of 18 years.

The respondent submits that the herein complaint does not amount to a trade dispute within the meaning of the Act as the verbal warning which is the subject of the complaint has expired. It asserts that it acted at all times within its own disciplinary and grievance procedure and that the sanction applied was reasonable in all of the circumstances.

In relation to the first incident the complainant received positive coaching and advice in line with the informal procedure. The complainant accepted that the error occurred as a result of his failure of attention to detail. In those circumstances and in light of the sensitive nature of the product and cost (although no actual loss occurred) the verbal warning was appropriate and fair.

I do not accept that the expiry of the sanction post lodgement of the herein complaint can be regarded as anything less than a trade dispute within the meaning of the Act.  

I accept that it is not for me to consider what I might do in the circumstances presented however it is for me to review the substantive and procedural issues involved as part of my reasoning in coming to a recommendation.

I am satisfied that the substantive issue was of sufficient import to warrant investigation but I am not satisfied that it was legitimate in the procedural aspect to include any consideration of the previous incident (June 16^th) in coming to a decision to issue a verbal warning as that issue had been dealt with in procedure earlier. I also note that there was no reference to an operator error in the technical investigation of the first incident.

I recommend that the disciplinary sanction of verbal warning arising from the incident of the 29^th of July 2016 be expunged from the record.