ADJUDICATION OFFICER RECOMMENDATION
Adjudication Reference: ADJ-00020213
Parties:
| Complainant | Respondent |
Anonymised Parties | An IT Systems Support Officer | A Hospital |
Representatives |
|
Complaint:
Act | Complaint/Dispute Reference No. | Date of Receipt |
CA-00026712-001 |
Date of Adjudication Hearing:
Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer:
Procedure:
Between February 6th and June 10th 2019, this complainant submitted six complaints to the WRC under various pieces of legislation. In accordance with Section 41 of the Workplace Relations Act, 2015, Section 79 of the Employment Equality Acts 1998 – 2015 and Section 13 of the Industrial Relations Acts 1969, these complaints and disputes were assigned to me by the Director General. From a scheduling perspective, the complainant agreed that all six complaints could be dealt with together, but she requested that her complaints under the Employment Equality Acts be considered first. On August 14th 2019, I heard submissions from the complainant and the respondent in relation to the complaints of discrimination. The grievances under the Industrial Relations Act were considered on September 23rd 2019.
On the forms she submitted to the WRC, the complainant did not indicate that she would be represented at the hearing of her complaints. On one form, she said that it is very difficult for her to write about her complaint without getting distracted. On another, she referred to the fact that in 2015, she was absent from work due to stress and in 2019, she was absent again because of stress. She said that she has a difficulty hearing, particularly when people talk over her.
Considering these challenges, and, because of the complexity and number of complaints, in advance of the first hearing, I instructed the case officer to write to the complainant to encourage her to bring someone with her who has experience of attending hearings at the WRC, or who is familiar with industrial relations and employment law. In his letter, the case officer explained to the complainant that the hearings will involve her being cross-examined by the IBEC executive representing the hospital, and she will have the opportunity to cross-examine their witnesses. The complainant was advised that she could be accompanied by a relative or a friend, or both; however, to help the process to run as smoothly as possible, and to give her the best chance to make her case effectively, she was advised to be represented by a trade union official, a solicitor or someone from her local Citizens Information Centre.
On August 14th 2019, the complainant attended the hearing without representation. At the opening of proceedings, I asked her to re-consider her decision, but she said that she didn’t want to be represented because it would take too long to explain her case to someone. I am satisfied that, while she could have been represented at the hearing, the complainant chose not to be. I regret her decision in this regard because she was disorganised and there was no chronological order in the way she presented her complaints.
September 23rd 2019 was the second of two days of hearings at which I enquired into the six complaints submitted by the complainant. The hospital’s Human Resources Manager and the complainant’s line manager, who is the Manager of the Clinical Activity Reporting Unit attended and gave evidence. They were represented by Ms Aisling McDevitt of IBEC. Ms Sinéad O’Connor from the WRC Secretariat attended the hearing to ensure that the proceedings were manageable for the complainant.
The subject of this recommendation is the complainant’s second complaint, submitted on March 3rd 2019. At the hearing, the complainant informed me that she was absent due to illness from the middle of January 2019 and, on May 20th, she was compulsorily retired because of incapacity. She is entitled to an early pension on the grounds of ill health.
Background:
The complainant commenced employment in the hospital in March 2003. By the time of her retirement in May 2019, she was in a Grade V role of “Data Informatics and Reporting Officer” and she reported to the Manager of the Clinical Activity Reporting Unit (“CARU”). In her job description, her role is described as “report-writing, data extraction and statistical compiling throughout the hospital to inform business intelligence as required by the Clinical Activity Reporting Unit”. The complainant said that her job involved the maintenance of data quality, data governance and checking, the extraction of data for reports, staff training, answering telephone queries, drawing up organisation charts and attendance at project meetings and teleconferences. At the hearing, the CARU Manager said that the complainant had considerable expertise in IT systems and data management. Outline Chronology In 2014, the complainant was working in the Patient Services Department and, around the time of an IT systems upgrade, she said had several grievances related to her job. She said these grievances involved her requesting “tools to do the job that I had been assigned” and “requests for processes as to how things were done.” Following a meeting with her Department Head and the Human Resources Manager, she got a letter confirming that “improved work flows would be worked on,” but, she said that this didn’t happen. In August 2015, the complainant said that she was sent home from work. She said that she remained absent until January 2016 because of workplace stress. An advertisement was posted for a temporary Systems Officer to cover her role during her absence. The person who got the temporary job was the brother of her line manager at the time and the complainant alleged that he got the job as a result of canvassing. When she returned to work, the complainant was concerned at the access he had been given to the e-mail account for the job and to various IT systems. The complainant said that between 2014 and 2017, her post was “split and splintered by the introduction of various new posts.” She said that one job was to communicate with and to represent senior management and this was assigned to a person at a higher grade than her. The second job was to improve communications about processes and this was given to a less senior manager. The complainant said that there was no improvement in her work processes because, in March 2016, her manager told her not to contact the person in the process role. The complainant said that she submitted a formal grievance about this on three occasions, but she got no response. In April 2016, the complainant was moved to report to the manager of the Clinical Activity Unit, while still carrying out some work for the Patient Services Unit. In February 2017, the complainant said that, following a meeting between two departments, her former line manager, the Head of Patient Services, made a complaint about her. She made a counter-claim about her manager and about her working conditions, which, she claimed were very difficult. An investigation was carried out by an independent consultant, but the complainant said that her own complaints were not considered. She believes that the manager who complained about her counselled two witnesses about the evidence they gave to the investigator. In her submission she said, “the Investigation Findings were that I was found to be of a bullying behaviour, albeit unintentional.” The complainant appealed against this outcome; however, the hospital did not accept her appeal because it was submitted too late. A disciplinary investigation arising from the findings of this report resulted in the complainant being issued with a written warning on January 18th 2018. At the hearing of her grievances on September 23rd 2019, the complainant said that she did not consent to me reading the report of the independent consultant which was submitted in evidence by the hospital and I returned the document to Ms McDevitt. In July 2018, the complainant said that she was listening to the radio at work and she heard a feature about the new General Data Protection Regulations. She said that she thought that using the Regulations might be one way of getting her issues resolved. On one day, she sent 33 e-mails to the Human Resources Manager, requesting specific information and a designated reference number for each item, to assist her “to raise the issues with the Data Protection Office in relation to the fair processing of data about me.” In August, the complainant sent a 50-page submission to a consultant gynaecologist / obstetrician at the hospital by way of an appeal against the disciplinary warning of January 2018. These communications and what were referred to as “the excessive number of complaints / grievances / correspondence you have been sending to senior management since January 2018” resulted in a second disciplinary investigation. On October 18th 2018, the complainant was issued with a final written warning. Her appeal against this warning was rejected. On January 3rd 2019, the complainant refused to attend a meeting with her manager unless she had a witness present. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss an operational matter. On January 14th, she was suspended, pending an investigation into her failure to carry out a reasonable instruction. On February 6th 2019, in her complaint form in relation to this complaint, she said, “I am currently on sick leave for stress.” On August 14th, at the WRC, the complainant said that she had suffered an injury at work and she consulted a psychiatrist. At some point during her absence, she was examined by the hospital’s occupational health physician. Following a discussion by telephone with her consultant, the occupational health physician wrote a report in which he concluded that that the complainant is permanently incapable of carrying out her duties at work and he recommended that she would be permitted to retire on medical grounds. |
Summary of Complainant’s Case:
On her complaint form, the complainant said that this complaint dates back to what she considered canvassing in 2016 and a secondment in 2017. She also has a grievance related to the disciplinary investigation of October 2018, a post advertised in April and November 2018. Canvassing in 2016 and Secondment in 2017 The complainant said that a person who covered for her when she was absent from August 2016 until January 2017 was seconded to work on a national project in 2017. The complainant said that the secondment was not advertised and that the person appointed to the project team had no IT experience or qualifications, although he had knowledge of the processes. She said that because of his appointment, the seconded person was allowed to attend “super user” training and to do the interface testing instead of her. The seconded person is a brother of the Patient Services Manager, who had meetings with him every week, whereas, she was instructed not to ask him about the processes that he was working on. At the end of the project, the complainant said that she was left without the information she needed to do her job. She said that this resulted in her having less experience than the seconded person and she feels that she was “left behind” due to the actions of management. She considers this to be a form of isolation which was to her detriment. Disciplinary Investigation in October 2018 From her complaint form, it is apparent that the complainant’s opinion is that the final written warning issued to her in October 2018 was in relation to the 33 e-mails that she sent to the HR Manager in one day in July that year. She said, “The objective of the e-mail action was to get closure on the complaints by sending each individually, so that each complaint could be sent back to me with a reference number, gaining consensus as to which complaint was being referred to by the reference number being synchronised with the complaint in that way. “My intention was that I would then send each complaint to the data protection office to ensure that it was closed.” The Advertising of New Posts On her complaint form, the complainant said that in April and November 2018, a new, six-month temporary post was advertised, reporting to the manager who made the complaint about her in 2017. She claims that the job description for the advertised job comprised about 50% of the tasks that she was doing for five years. She said that the manager to whom the temporary person would report to had withheld work-related information from her and had refused to meet her and her manager to keep them up to date on patient services issues. |
Summary of Respondent’s Case:
Canvassing in 2016 and Secondment in 2017 For the hospital, Ms McDevitt said that a person was appointed to fill in for the complainant in 2017, following the advertisement of the temporary position in the hospital. The Clinical Activity Reporting Unit Manager (“CARU Manager”) who attended the hearing said that, from the time that the complainant reported to her in April 2016, there were no meetings with the Patient Services Manager and that information was shared by e-mail. The CARU Manager said that the secondment of the project worker was for six months to work on processes. The complainant was to focus on report-writing, as she was excellent at this aspect of the job. The CARU Manager said that the seconded person has returned to his old job. Disciplinary Investigation in October 2018 Ms McDevitt said that this matter was the subject of the earlier hearing under ADJ-00019564 and it is a duplication of that complaint. The Advertising of New Posts Ms McDevitt submitted that the advertising of posts is not a legitimate matter for consideration as a trade dispute. |
Findings and Conclusions:
I have considered the case made by the complainant at the hearing of these matters and I have listened carefully to what she said concerning her employment and the difficulties she said she experienced, particularly following her return from sick leave in January 2016. It seems to me that much of her grievance stems from her relationship with the Patient Services Manager. It is my view that the issues that the complainant has submitted for adjudication are duplicates of the grievances that she submitted in her complaint of February 6th 2018, under ADJ-00019564, which have already been adjudicated on. I have a concern that, in a unionised environment, the complainant decided not to consult with a trade union representative to assist her with the issues she was finding difficult at work. She could have benefited from the guidance of someone more experienced than her in workplace grievances. This complaint was submitted in March 2019, two months before the complainant retired. At the hearing, the complainant said that she is 51 years old, so the value of an early pension is significant. It is my view that the decision to permit her to retire early is a reasonable and fair resolution to her grievances. |
Decision:
Section 13 of the Industrial Relations Acts, 1969 requires that I make a recommendation in relation to the dispute.
I have concluded that the grievances outlined by the complainant on her complaint form and at this hearing were resolved by the hospital’s decision to permit her to retire early in May 2019. Therefore, I recommend that no further action is taken in relation to these matters. |
Dated: September 30th 2019
Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer: Catherine Byrne
Key Words:
Grievances |