Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

Nursing Assistant

Healthcare facility

Representatives

Self represented.

Management Support Services.

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

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

CA-00033867-001

19/01/2020

The worker commenced employment as a Nursing Assistant in December 2018 in the employer’s health care facility for elderly patients.

She earns €563 gross a fortnight.

She submitted her complaints of what she sees as bullying treatment by her employer to the WRC on 19/1/2020.

The worker has complained about the employer’s treatment of her which in her complaint form she classifies as bullying.

She states that she was assigned duties in a manner that was contrary to agreements in the workplace. For example, there is an agreement that a nursing assistant should rotate between 1:1 assignments and assignments to a ward. Yet on the 17 October having competed a 1: 1assignemnt with a resident, she was then assigned   to a further 1:1 assignment for 3 weeks with no rotation between staff because the nurses refused to do it. The only break she got from the 1: 1 assignment was when she went on her lunch/coffee/meal break. She maintains that she is entitled to be sent back to a ward having spent 3 weeks caring exclusively for one patient.

She was wrongly accused on the 17th of October at a meeting with the CNM (Clinic Nurse Manager)   and Assistant Director of Nursing and a HR representative of refusing to work with a resident. She thought she was doing the right thing telling in expressing her uneasiness to the Clinical Nurse Mangers as the patient was unpredictable and could run off and she would be held responsible. They said that they would try and work around it with her.

She was out on sick leave from 24 October 2019- 7 December. She had to have surgery on her back. When she returned on the 7 December, she was placed on a 12-hour shift   on a 1:1 assignment in a different unit to where she normally works. The resident to which she was assigned was very difficult to manage. She asked for help from the regular staff that work there all the time . Most of them refused except for the CNM who did relieve her for a few hours. She felt unable to return to the 1: 1 assignment. She went off on sick leave for 2 weeks.

She was the only nursing assistant who was transferred between units on the same day and this happened on a number of occasions.

A HR executive told the worker on the 5 December that she would send out her rostered hours, but she never heard from her.

The employer wanted to terminate her bank contract and move her to full hours. This would be   a new contract. For her to change her contract to full hours would mean going back to the beginning and losing entitlements built up over the previous year.

In December the employer advised that if she wanted to retain her job she would have to do 2 12- hour shifts a fortnight.

At the hearing the worker accepted that she must work 5 days back because of overpayment of leave which was a miscalculation on the employer’s part.

The worker has still received no roster and is still off work. She wants to work.

The employer’s treatment of her has caused her a lot of upset.

The worker is a nursing assistant. She is appointed on a casual “ bank” contract which means that she can be asked to work hours which are internally managed bank hours which arise through absences , leave or other contingencies. There is no guarantee of a fixed number of hours. The worker is not obliged to take on the work.

Entitlement to rotate between 1;1 care and ward assignments.

There is no agreement, as alleged, entitling a worker to be moved automatically out of a 1:1 assignment and on to the ward. Neither does an agreement exist enabling a nursing assistant to decline to work with a particular patient . The nursing assistants are deployed according to the needs of the service.

The worker complains that she should not have been moved to a unit on the 7 December to a location other than the one to which she is normally assigned. Her contract provides for her to be deployed across all locations with the healthcare facility.

The respondent explained to the worker in November that she had been overpaid for annual leave as she did not have enough hours to warrant the amount of leave paid to her.

The employer discussed the option of the worker terminating her bank contract and taking on a full-time contract. The employer needed clarity about her availability.

The HR department emailed the worker on the 9 December asking her to indicate her availability on the roster. No reply was received at any stage from the worker.

The employer’s representative stated that worker’s husband , also an employee in the health care facility, is on paid administrative leave.

The worker failed to use the agreed procedures for dealing with her complaints.

Before a dispute is referred to the WRC under the Industrial Relations Act , 1969,the worker is obliged to exhaust the internal procedures. The worker acknowledged that she had not used the agreed internal processes to address her complaints. The worker was unable to produce the agreements upon which she was relying.

In the absence of such an internal examination into her dispute, it is not my function to adjudicate on the fairness of her assignments , the requirement for more certainty around her commitment in advance of her return to work and the obstacles that lie in the way of her return.

I recommend that the employer restates to her what she is required to do to enable her return to work.

I recommend that she activates the internal procedures to address what she believes to be a difference in treatment concerning her assignments and how she is deployed within the health care facility.

I recommend that the employer restates to her what she is required to do to enable her return to work.

I recommend that she activates the internal procedures to address what she believes to be a difference in treatment concerning her assignments and how she is deployed within the health care facility.