Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

A Centre Manager

An Educational and Outdoor   Pursuits Organisation

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

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

CA-00025095-001

18/01/2019

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

CA-00025095-002

18/01/2019

The Respondent operates an education centre in the north midlands. The Complainant was recruited by the Respondent. He claims that he was offered a permanent post, the Respondents contend he had a fixed term employment contract of 6 months, which came to an end at the expiration of that period.

CA-00025095-002

The complaint for minimum notice was withdrawn at the Adjudication hearing

CA-00025095-001

The Complainant applied for a position of Operations Supervisor of the Centre in November 2017. He was interviewed on 19 December 2017. By telephone conversation on 20 December 2017 a manager with the Respondent telephoned him and told him that the role of Centre manager was now vacant and that he as offering him this role instead. The manager told him that the role would be for 6 months. The Complainant explained that he would not give up his current permanent position for a 6-month post. The manager told him that the role had to be advertised because of the statutory framework that governed the Respondent but that he wanted to offer him a permanent post. He told him that he could apply once the position was advertised but that all going well the post would be his, permanently. The Complainant accepted the post and started work.

The manager telephoned him in April 2018 and explained that the post would now be advertised. The Complainant took this to mean that the proper channels were being followed but that the position was still his.

The interviews were held on 23 July 2019 and the manager was not on the interview panel due to ill health. On 26 July 2019, two days before the fixed term was due to expire, the Complainant received an email from another manager informing him that he had not got the job and that he had to leave the employment the following day.

The Complainant was deeply shocked when he got the email and by the disrespectful way that he was treated.

The Complainant accepted that he did not discuss the permanence or otherwise of his job with anybody after the telephone conversation with his manager on 20 December 2017. His written contract was discussed and amended by his manager in April, his manager told him about the post being advertised, also in April and he was interviewed for the position in July, but at all times he believed that the manager would do right by him and honour the verbal commitment that was given to him on 20 December 2017.

Despite the advertising of the post and the conversations around this, he always understood that the job would be his on a permanent basis after 6 months as otherwise he would not have accepted it in December 2017.

People don’t leave permanent jobs for temporary jobs when they have a family to support.

CA-00025095-001

The Complainant was offered a fixed term 6-month contract in December 2017. The Respondent could not say exactly what was said to the Complainant during the telephone conversation between the manager and the Complainant on 20 December 2017 because the manager was unavailable to attend the Adjudication due to declining ill health, however they could confirm that he received a letter dated 2 January from his alleged colluding manager setting out the offer of the post. It explicitly stated that the post was for a fixed term of 6 months after which there would be an open competition. It was these terms that the Complainant accepted by email later that day.

It is untrue therefore for the Complainant to say that the job advertising process was an artifice and that he was promised the job all along. That is not the manner in which staff are recruited to the Respondent and no one else in the management were party to this alleged collusion. It is also significant that the recruitment process was the decision of three managers, not just the one with whom the Complainant allegedly had the agreement.

Furthermore, internal emails show that the manager emailed the Complainant 3 months prior to the expiration of the fixed term and invited him to apply for the post which would soon be advertised. This is not the actions of someone who had already assured the person that the job was theirs already.

In addition, the Complainant received his fixed term contract in April 2018 which again expressly states that the contract is a fixed term contract due to expire on 28 July 2018 and the Complainant signed this contract. In so doing the Complainant expressly signed up to these terms agreed cannot contend anything other than that he had accepted that his employment was for 6 months only.

The Complainant admitted in evidence that when he received this contract in April 2018 he discussed the contract with his manager. This was because a date in the contract was wrong and he asked his manager to rectify the date. This would have been a natural time to discuss the permanence or otherwise of his position and yet the Complainant’s evidence was that following their telephone conversation of 20 December 2017 he never discussed the matter again with his manager. This is not the actions of someone who believes that the job was assuredly his.

The Respondent submits that the fixed term contract signed by the Complainant binds him to the terms of that contract.

I do not disbelieve the Complainant when he says that on 20 December 2017 he believed that it was likely that his temporary role would be made permanent after six months. At that time the Respondent was keen to get him to take the role, given that they unexpectedly were faced with a vacancy in the role of Centre Manager. I can well believe that during the phone call the manager encouraged the Complainant to take the job and that all going well he could apply for and get the post on a permanent basis. However, I do not accept that this belief was based on an unequivocal assurance by the manager that the 6 month fixed term was not fixed at all and could be ignored.

Once he received the email on 2 January which clearly expressed the fixed term to be 6 months he should have sought further clarity from his manager before taking up the post. Furthermore, under the law of contract, a person is expected to understand and is assumed to agree with a document that sign their name to and the contract that the Complainant signed in April 2018 stated it clearly to be a fixed term contract of 6 months.

On the evidence before me, although I cannot exclude the possibility that what the Complainant says is true, I am of the view that by agreeing to the terms expressed in the letter dated 2 January 2017 and the signed contract dated 18 April 2018 are fatal to this complaint.

CA-00025095-002 . This complaint is withdrawn

CA-00025095-001

On the balance of probabilities, I find that the Complainant’s contract of employment was terminated due to the expiration of a fixed term contract that he signed on 19 April 2018 and that he was not dismissed. I do not find this complaint to be well founded

Unfair Dismissal under the Industrial Relations Acts – fixed term contract.