Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

A Demonstrator

A Placement Agency

Representatives

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

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

CA-00019574-001

31/05/2018

The Complainant believed she was entitled to be paid Redundancy where the job she had worked for the last four years was terminated.

The Respondent operates an Agency wherein it engages workers to work as and when they had Contracts that needed filling. The loss of the Contract wherein the Complainant had worked did not constitute a Redundancy situation, the Respondent claimed.

I have carefully considered the evidence adduced herein. The Complainant represented herself and the Respondent was represented by an Employment Consultant. The two company Directors gave comprehensive evidence.

The Employment herein is governed by a Contract of Employment dated the 4th of January 2011. There can be no doubt that this Contract is intended to operate as an “if and when” type Contract. Such Contracts afford very little security to the Employee and their use is widespread in this jurisdiction and I note have come under some scrutiny at legislative level in the recent past.

In the meantime, such Contracts are absolutely legal, and the premise is that the Employee will be asked to work if and when work is available to be offered. There is absolutely no mutuality of obligation and the Employee can refuse to do the work required as and when that refusal might suit the Employee. I note that from time to time and when it suited her, the Complainant herein did exercise that right not to avail of such work.

However, it is also common case that the Complainant has settled into a well-established routine in terms of her own working week. The Complainant is described as a demonstrator and has for the last 4 to 6 years been engaged exclusively to work for three given days of each week on the shop floor of a retailer unit in the Liffey Valley complex.

For its own reasons, by the middle of 2018, the said retailer decided to scale back its requirement for demonstrators on the shop floor. This scaling back directly impacted the Complainant and her colleagues who were unlikely to get any more than one day of work per week with this particular retailer into the future.

I heard evidence from the Company Directors that there were other opportunities and a wider client base with whom the Employer worked. They were not restricted to this one client. The Director indicated that she had had excellent relationships with all the demonstrators and knew how disappointed they were to no longer have these jobs but she was willing to work with them to quickly replace the work with other opportunities.

I fully accept that the loss of the client and the work in question constituted significant disruption in the Complainants life. The Complainant had enjoyed her work and had expected to continue to enjoy the work on an ongoing basis.

I sympathise with the Complainant who was disappointed. However, there can be no question of a Redundancy having arisen as there was ongoing work on offer, the Contract itself anticipated the ebb and flow of work and the Complainant was aware of the nature and terms and conditions of the Contract entered. There can be question of this having been a permanent position made redundant.

The Complainant fails in her Redundancy claim