Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

A Business Development Representative

A Services Company

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 77 of the Employment Equality Act, 1998

CA-00022463-001

07/10/2018

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 77 of the Employment Equality Act, 1998

CA-00022464-001

07/10/2018

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under the Industrial Relations Acts

CA-00022465-001

07/10/2018

The complainant makes complaints under the Employment Equality Acts of discrimination on the basis of civil status and age in respect of promotion, training, his conditions of employment.

He also claims that he was dismissed for discriminatory reasons and because he opposed discrimination, that he was the victim of discriminatory harassment and miscellaneous discrimination.

Specifically, he says he was the subject of discriminatory treatment in relation to the company dress code and that this was on the basis of his nationality.

He says employees who were junior to him were paid more than he was.

His complaint under the Industrial relations Acts relates to the respondent’s failure to properly set out the detail regarding improvements needed in a Performance Improvement programme, which led to the termination of his employment, and then takes issue with the dismissal itself.

The respondent says that there is no basis under Equality legislation for the complaint in relation to the dress code and notes that the complainant is raising the nationality ground for the first time at the hearing.

The complainant has also failed to identify a comparator and notes that the section in which he worked comprises people of the same nationality as himself.

His complaint in relation to promotion states that he was discriminated against on the basis of his knowledge but this is not one of the protected grounds within the Act.

Neither is any comparator provided for his complaint of pay discrimination. There is no evidence of discrimination and the complainant has again failed to establish a prima facie case.

Regarding the complaint of dismissal under the Industrial Relations Acts there were three reasons for the complainant’s dismissal. The first was that he had manipulated his call records to represent greater activity than was taking place, he placed a post on social media which was unfairly critical of and damaging to the respondent and also, he failed to effect an improvement in his performance as required by the PIP.

He was accorded fair procedure in the disciplinary process.

The respondent views the complaints as falling within the purview of s77A of the Employment Equality Acts where there is a provision to dismiss a claim made in ‘bad faith or which is frivolous, vexations or misconceived or relates to a trivial matter.

As noted above the complainant has failed to identify a comparator for any of his equality complaints or has relied on grounds which do not provide protection.

His equal pay claim fails to specify whether the alleged comparators were older or younger than him, or had a different civil status.

All of his complaints should be dismissed.

The respondent has urged that the complaints should be dismissed on the basis that they are vexations and misconceived, or at best that they fail to reach the standard of a prima facie case.

The complainant, who did not have legal or other professional representation appeared to have a very poor grasp of the basic principles required to present his case under the chosen statutes.

When this became clear at the beginning of the hearing he was given the benefit of a brief adjournment to consider how best to provide particulars which met the requirements of the Acts.

Even then he was unable to do so.

There is not one of the complaints under the Employment Equality Acts that came anywhere close to meeting the requirements of a prima facie case. He offered no evidence in relation to his complaint related to discriminatory dismissal, the dress code, pay or promotion. He introduced the nationality ground for the first time at the hearing on being pressed to provide greater detail.

Regarding the Industrial Relations Act complaint, the complainant had only some eight months service with the respondent.

The respondent says he was dismissed for gross misconduct which included manipulating telephone records to overstate his level of activity. His target was to make fifty calls per day; on some days he made only five.

He engaged in what was described as ‘Call in data manipulation’ where a call is, in fact, made but not with serious intent to conclude company business. There was evidence of a number of very brief calls made by the complainant.

His public criticism of the respondent on social media was not something it could be expected to overlook and he made no effort to justify it at the hearing.

Evidence was given of the procedures followed by the company in effecting the dismissal. The complainant did not dispute that he was given notice of the disciplinary hearing and put on notice of the possible range of sanctions.

Taking all these circumstances into account the dismissal was both procedurally fair and justified on these facts and there are no grounds to disturb it.

For the reasons set out above I do not uphold complaints CA-00022463-001, CA-00022464-001 or CA-00022465-001 and they are all dismissed.