Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

A Bookkeeper

A Sports Club

Representatives

Mackay Solicitors

Peninsula Business Services

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 8 of the Unfair Dismissals Act, 1977

CA-00025059-001

16/01/2019

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 11 of the Minimum Notice & Terms of Employment Act, 1973

CA-00025059-002

16/01/2019

The complainant had been a member of the respondent club for about fifty years and had served as Treasurer up to November 2017. He had been undertaking bookkeeping duties on a paid basis since 1995 and continued in this role after he arose from the office as Treasurer in 2017.

It was agreed at the hearing that the Club Secretary who had been named as a respondent would be removed as a party and that the complaint would stand against the club only.

The complainant was largely autonomous in the performance of his duties which related to the respondent’s payroll and accounts.

He was suspended on November 30th pending an investigation into whether payments due were being made into employees’ pension fund and he was asked to return all data and documents belonging to the respondent.

He sought a postponement of the investigation and the respondent asked for various log in details to be provided to enable the continuous management of its affairs.

The complainant responded that some of the details were personal to him and did not provide them, although he did process the December payroll.

He was sent a text message on January 8th, 2019 requesting him to attend a meeting with the executive committee of the club which he did not attend.

He did not attend and was dismissed.

The complainant confirms that he was invited to the meeting on January 10th but he was not in a position to attend.

He was given no indication of the purpose of the meeting and was genuinely unable to attend.

He had provided the necessary access details to the respondent in December and had administered the payroll. Some of the access information sought was personal to him and related to his own status as a user and he was unwilling to share it with a third party.

He was not being uncooperative.

The dismissal lacked any procedural fairness.

As will be seen above the parties in this case were fellow members of a sports club, in some cases for most of a lifetime; some had been good friends.

And of course, it is to be hoped that when this matter is dealt with those relationships might be restored.

However, once any entity, whether a multinational corporation or the smallest, not for profit club enters into an employment relationship with someone they are brought within the ambit of Irish employment law and the legal principles governing employment practise.

Chief among these is the doctrine of fair procedure. This is not a demanding concept in its general application and could just as easily be described, and in this case rather appropriately, by the more colloquial notion of ‘fair play’.

In a situation where a person’s rights may be adversely affected there is an obligation to apply these fair procedure principles; to investigate the truth of any allegation, to let the person know what is being alleged against them, to hear their side of the story, and to be measured in the application of any sanction.

In this case, as the respondent’s own narrative confirms none of these principles were applied, nor is there any sign of an effort to do so. The principles above were breached in every respect.

The complainant was peremptorily dismissed at a meeting whose purpose had not been advised to him and which he could not attend. No effort was made to re-arrange it.

The dismissal was demonstrably unfair by reference to the principles set out above.

The complaint regarding notice also succeeds. The complainant had been employed since 2005 and is therefore entitled to eight weeks’ notice at the rate of €238.00 per week.

For the reasons set out above I uphold complaint CA-00025059-001 and award the complainant €2,500.00.

I also uphold complaint CA-00025059-002 and award the complainant €1904.00 being eight weeks wages.

Unfair Dismissal