ADJUDICATION OFFICER DECISION
Adjudication Reference: ADJ-00009117
Complaint:
Act | Complaint Reference No. | Date of Receipt |
Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 21 Equal Status Act, 2000 | CA-00011977-001 | 18/06/2017 |
Date of Adjudication Hearing: 03/07/2018
Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer: Pat Brady
Procedure:
In accordance with Section 25 of the Equal Status Act, 2000, following the referral of the complaint to me by the Director General, I inquired into the complaint and gave the parties an opportunity to be heard by me and to present to me any evidence relevant to the complaint.
Background:
The complainant had placed an order for goods that were to be delivered by the respondent. On the day of the delivery the complainant was at home all day awaiting its arrival. In due course he received a text message to the effect that the respondent had not been able to make the delivery and inviting him to make contact to arrange another appointment. |
Summary of Complainant’s Case:
The complainant outlined to the hearing in detail his availability on the day in question. He stated that he was at the delivery address all day. On the complaint form, the complainant described the message received from the respondent regarding its inability to deliver the package as ‘libellous, defamatory, not to mention slanderous’ and that he ‘had never been so degraded in his entire life’ and that he had felt ‘demeaned, insulted and discriminated’ [sic]. His complaint is that this represents discrimination of him because he is black, and on account of his race, and that if he had been white the treatment would have been different. |
Summary of Respondent’s Case:
The respondent submitted that no prima facie case had been made out under the Act and that it had no case to answer. |
Findings and Conclusions:
The facts giving rose to the complaint are clear. The complainant refused to state how the events described above represented a breach of the Equal Status Acts. When pressed to do so after his opening outline of the facts, he insisted on proceeding with a further account of his day spent waiting for the respondent’s delivery event though the simple fact of the non-delivery of the package had been clearly established, and it was necessary to identify, not least for purposes of hearing the respondent’s response, how the Act had been breached. He persisted with his refusal to state how these facts represented a breach of the Act, insisting on a more detailed recitation of his day spent at home. Eventually, on being further pressed to do so he left the hearing in a most unruly manner. The Hearing could not make further progress unless he identified the alleged breach of the Act. The complainant’s case is that the company treated him in this way because of his colour and /or race. On the above facts the respondent had no means of knowing his colour and confirmed this at the adjudication hearing, and said it would it discriminate on such a basis as its business is in the delivery of packages to any customer. A complainant must establish facts from which a complaint of discrimination may be inferred to establish a prima facie case and despite the hyperbole on the complaint form about the impact of this on the complainant, there is nothing to indicate an act of discrimination. There may be some customer service issue which the complainant can pursue over the alleged non-delivery of the item but the Equal Status Act is not the proper vehicle under which to do so on these facts. The complaint is vexatious, entirely without merit and it is dismissed. |
Decision:
Section 25 of the Equal Status Acts, 2000 – 2015 requires that I make a decision in relation to the complaint in accordance with the relevant redress provisions under section 27 of that Act.
Complaint CA-00009177-001 is not upheld and is dismissed. |
Dated: 09/07/2018
Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer: Pat Brady
Key Words:
Equal status, prima facie case. |