Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

Fleet and Logistics Officer

A Public Body

Representatives

Ted Kenny SIPTU Health Division

Act

Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 13 of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969

CA-00032818-001

09/12/2019

This is a claim regarding redeployment measures adopted by the employer in the aftermath of a service closure in 2012.

The Union on behalf of the claimant have contended that seniority was the agreed criteria to underpin the redeployments and the employer departed from this position to the detriment of the claimant.

The Claimant is seeking redeployment from his current position.

The Respondent, a Public Body has rejected the claim.

The claimant has been employed in the public service for 40 years, the first 10 years were at grade 4 and he was upgraded to grade 5 in 2000.

The claimant is seeking redeployment as an approved redeployment process had not worked out in his case in 2013. He identified the position and grading he was seeking at hearing.

The Union outline that a decision was made to centralise services in 2012 and the claimants work location closed. The service moved from 9 centres to 2 centres nationwide. LCR 20456 dated January 2013 set the framework for redeployment options on 29 January 2013.

The Union submitted that on 16 October 2013, the claimant spoke on the telephone with Mr A, Redeployment Liaison Officer and expressed an interest in Emergency Planning as a deployment option. This was the approved action n accordance with the Redeployment Tool Kit. Mr A was non-committal in response but confirmed that he had forwarded this request to the relevant Department. He was requested to undertake further training which he agreed to. He had expressed a reservation regarding a return to road work.

On 29 October 2013, Mr A sent to following email to the claimant in response to his Inquiry.

“Your colleague has been assigned to work with Emergency Planning Office on a temporary basis while the redeployment process is ongoing.

The securing of a WTE and funding to make this position available on a full-time basis is a matter for the General Manager of that section. To date this has not been achieved. However, in the eventuality that a permanent position becomes available, then the selection of a candidate to fill the post will be a matter for the relevant manager outside of the control of X “

The claimant lost out on this appointment as the incumbent was subsequently appointed and he remains aggrieved. The Union referred to section B9 of a Public Service Redeployment Policy which addressed “assigning Volunteers “

“If only one-person volunteers for a post and they work in the same of similar grade they will be appointed. If more than one person in the grade has expressed an interest in a post, the post will normally be offered in order of seniority -the staff member with the longest length of time serving in his current grade is deemed most senior across all applicants in the grade, subject to the normal conditions applying “

This could be varied where DPER determined priorities.

The claimant had worked for the past 16 years in an Acting capacity and this job was now gone. He had been Office based 2015-2018 and assigned to Fleet in 2018, but the job was not what he thought it would be and he had not secured any documentation regarding this position.

The claimant was keen to reconcile the missed opportunity which surrounded the earlier 2013 redeployment by a live redeployment to an identified position and compensation.

The Employer operates a large public body. This claim pertains to a named sector of that service.

The Employer rejected the claim and gave an outline of the options which arose following the closure and reconfiguration of a Regional service dated 7 July 2014. This addressed an implementation of LCR 20604 and LCR 20546 and identified 11 steps to be followed. These steps were to address issues of engagement, retirements, notification of expression of interest, redundancies, redeployments, local meetings in the South, Local reviews in named areas.

Extensive engagements followed in several sites regarding redeployments which resulted in internal and external redeployments. The employer confirmed that the claimant remained with the service in a clerical role while retaining his salary.

The employer disputed that seniority was an agreed determinant for redeployment. The Employer clarified that the service sought to redeploy of the claimant’s colleague in October 2013 due to his past military service and no further request for redeployment followed this.

The employer was aware of the claimants wish to relocate in 2020 and understood that he was engaging locally in options surrounding this. The prospect of a Lateral Transfer was viable, and this was supported, however, the employer was not prepared to provide the claimant with the position he sought due to a grading variance.

The Employer did express an interest in scoping out the potential for a job evaluation.

I have considered both parties oral and written submissions in this case. The background to this Dispute referred to a very ambitious programme of reconfiguration which ran from 2012 onwards. The claimant’s case is that he got lost in that process and was overtaken by a junior colleague for a position in a job he was particularly interested in.

The Employer confirmed that this was an extraordinary challenging period which required intensive third party and Labour Court involvement for an extended period and apart from the claimant’s present-day case, there were no other residual issues. The project, while arduous had been a success.

I have reflected on this and have read and considered the Labour Court Recommendation dated January 2013 and the Conciliation Report dated July 2014. These are very detailed oversight documents, and both provided a veritable and flexible way forward for the parties at the time.

I have reviewed my scope under section 13 of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969 and note that I am not permitted to investigate a claim if the Labour Court has made a Recommendation to the dispute. Giving the timing of this claim, I am satisfied that the Labour Court has not addressed this specific issue and I can proceed with my investigation of the claim that arrived at the WRC on 9 December 2019.

The change sought by the employer in relation to service reconfiguration in 2012 was a seismic undertaking. I asked the parties if this had concluded in a published evaluation of how everything had concluded? That document was not available, but both parties confirmed that the claimant’s case was the sole residual matter left over from that process.

I considered the claimants pathway since 2012. He has spent a considerable period of 16 years acting for a Higher Officer. This seemed to over shadow the events of October 2013 when he expressed an interest in a named post, subsequently given to a junior colleague with military training. I could not identify any appeal of this action locally or through the recommended adjudication process. In this the claimant missed the opportunity for a much earlier resolution. Instead, he had carried this sense of injustice since 2013 to the present day and contends that he was not provided with a redeployment opportunity. I have looked carefully into this assertion.

I asked the parties if they had access to intelligence on the timing of the submitted expression of interest from the claimant and his colleague in late 2013? This detail had not been retained by either party. I note that the Conciliation Agreement was dated July 2014 and this issue was not flagged then by the Union.

If I concede to the Union claim, I am being asked to provide the claimant with currency to redeploy to a higher grade from an unimplemented request to redeploy in 2013. I have some difficulty with this request as a safe means of resolution as I cannot identify a real time appeal of the redeployment in 2013, nor did the claimant compete for the position when it was eventually advertised. For me, at least this points to an excessive level of distance from an earlier attempted resolution. I also have concerns that all positions are subject to Public Appointment service rules surrounding recruitment principles.

However, I am mindful that the Employer wishes to work with the claimant towards a resolution of his current claim, that of wising to redeploy currently.

I have now revisited the circumstances of the case and have established that the claimant had expressed a clear desire to transfer to a stated area in October 2013. He was gazumped in that expression of interest by a junior colleague. By then, the Labour court had heralded a clear framework for the parties to work under in terms of a framework for redeployment, support and training. The claimant’s expression of interest dated 16 October 2013 was ignored and the claimant was placed in a training cohort without ever getting an opportunity to redeploy. The Labour Court Recommendation prohibited that level of exclusion. The parties ought to have reflected and drawn on that at that time.

I must conclude that the claimant was treated unfairly and unreasonably in that regard but did not mitigate this by mounting a challenge at that time. I can understand that he was acting up for a colleague and this may have taken his time and focus.

I note the reference to the matrix of seniority in the PAS document, but neither the Labour Court or Conciliation report flagged this as an agreed position. I do not have records of either employee’s actual service.

I note that the claimant acted in a Clerical post for 16 years. He retained his salary of his substantive grade during this time. He now wishes to redeploy to an identified post which is at a higher grade.

I have considered all the circumstances of the case and the undisputed fact that that the claimant was overlooked for redeployment in 2013. I believe that he deserves a chance to redeploy in full and final settlement of any residual rights he might hold under the 2013/2014 Reconfiguration Process. He is the undisputed sole remaining beneficiary of this process.

I have found merit in this Dispute.

Section 13 of the Industrial Relations Acts, 1969 requires that I make a recommendation in relation to the dispute.

I have found some merit in this dispute. I recommend that that the claimant accepts a redeployment to the named post at hearing. However, considering the variance in grading, B13 of the PAS document should prevail.

If they move to a post where the pay scale ends at a higher point than theirs, they continue their own pay scale to its maximum

Following 6 months in post, it must be open to the parties to apply the addendum to this section through agreed job evaluation.

I make this recommendation in full and final settlement of all claims arising from 2013 /2014 Reconfiguration and I have not identified grounds for an award of compensation. I consider it fairer and more reasonable for the claimant to now be placed in an area where he expressed an earlier interest and for which he expressed an interest in career enhancement going forward

I also recommend that the parties engage in a collaborative evaluation report of all such Reconfiguration exercises such they re-occur in the future as nobody at any level should be left behind.

Residual Redeployment