Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

 Employee

 Employer

Representatives

 self

 management

Act

Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

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

21/09/2020

The employee is employed as a Senior Session Pharmacist by the employer on a sessional basis.

Employment commenced in March 2002 and the Complainant remains in employment.

This complaint was received by the Workplace Relations Commission on 21st September 2020.

After the closure of one of his main clinics of work in 2019, the employee approached management and HR to have the uncertainty surrounding his hours and pay resolved. The only person who replied or tried to assist in any way was his line manager, she responded promptly and assisted in how she could in all enquiries, but ultimately, she had no say in the financial decisions and so the employee was directed to engage with HR.

The employee’s emails were constantly ignored, and he was passed from pillar to post in his attempts to get a resolution. Eventually he was totally dismissed by HR, refusing any further engagement with him claiming that he was not their employee but employed by another section in the organisation and therefore not their problem to fix.

The employee has worked hard as a dedicated and reliable employee in their clinics for almost 16 years. To be treated in such a disrespectful and disregarding manner after all these years of service is incredibly upsetting in the first instance.

Secondly, the amount of times the employee has been the target of disruption of the payment of his wages over the past 10 years has been shocking.

The employee feels that he has had to engage the services of the LRC/WRC numerous times and at times the services of a solicitor in order to get paid his due wages fairly.

At no time, have these issues been of his creation – he has always made himself available for work, (regularly in excess of his obligations in order to help his manager roster to meet service needs), he has never not presented for work as rostered, left unauthorised, or made fraudulent pay claims –he has never done anything that warranted withholding his pay. He has always been honest and diligent in his approach to all matters in work and workplace. Each one of these disputes has been as a result of  management/HR altering his terms of conditions of employment without discussion or having budgetary spats between administrative areas regarding who is responsible for paying him for the work he has done.

Management are trying to get away with the least possible pay-out to him when compensation is due. And now, despite this specific payment issue being addressed already, with a very clear guidance from the WRC on how to proceed, here he is again, in the stressful position where he is being denied payment of wages due. At this point, he can only think this as another episode in a

campaign of bullying against him, using the highest impact tool they can use against an employee –their wages.

The stress surrounding the ongoing uncertainty of getting paid my wages for work he has done, and the resulting anxiety surrounding his ability to pay his  bills and live his life has been more than anyone should have to endure.

The internal mechanisms available within the organisation to have these issues and concerns dealt with have let him down terribly in the past. He feels that he has been shunted around numerous departments, or ignored, dismissed and even outright lied to and lied about by various members of various departments throughout the respondent organisation. HR employer relations managers in particular have been negligent in their obligations as Industrial Relations managers.

The fact that he is not a union member has left him vulnerable to these attacks at a level that most of his colleagues are rarely subjected to. It is for reasons like this and the repeated nature of withholding payment of his wages that he does not have any faith in the employer organisation’s  internal mechanisms and require the services of the WRC in this manner.

The employee does not understand why these actions are taken against him consistently like this and ongoing for years. He has always tried to be pleasant and professional in his approach to all, he is a diligent and reliable worker and all he expects is to get paid properly and treated fairly. After the recommendations were issued by the WRC, he thought that the resolution of this compensation matter would have been easier and without conflict. Instead management decided to ignore the recommendation and persisted with more of the behaviour he had encountered before.

On 8th January 2020 local management received correspondence from the WRC in relation to the employee’s complaint made under the IR Acts. This was subsequently forwarded to the Employee Relations Manager for who subsequently issued the WRC referral to the Employee Relations Manager in another section of the organisation. Following engagement it was decided that the respondent was the initial  Employee Relations Manager.

On 11th February 2020 the Employee Relations Manager advised the employee that she was the respondent and requested to meet with the employee in an attempt to exhaust the internal mechanism, this offer was rejected by the employee.

The employer, through the Employee Relations Manager advised the employee that compensation for loss of earnings can only be calculated after a 12-month period of the change of roster in order to calculate the actual loss. On 20th February 2020 the employee outlined his position in respect of the compensation due to him, the amount calculated by the employee was €10,936.80.

On the 23rd July 2020 the employee’s line manager provided an estimate of loss of earnings.

On 27th August 2020 revised calculations were provided by local management – these were disputed by the employee.

Local Management on receipt of correspondence received from the employee carried out a further review of calculation of loss of earnings, this figure of €9468.30 was approved by Area Operations Manager but was rejected by the employee.

In conclusion the calculations provided is the total amount compensation due to the employee in compensation for loss of earnings as a result of the closure of his initial work location and is in line with national agreements.

In conducting my investigation, I have taken into account all relevant submissions presented to me by the parties.

The complaint submitted under the Industrial Relations Act is basically in relation to what the employee considers bullying at the hands of management, and in particular HR Management.

Looking at timelines involved I feel it is unacceptable that correspondence from the WRC was received on 8th January 2020 and it was not until 11th February that the employee was notified that the Employee Relations Manager was dealing with his complaint.

The correct respondent in this complaint is the named at the top of the page. The Employee Relations Manager is not the respondent.

This complaint of bullying should now be considered as a standalone complaint and the internal procedures I.E. Dignity at Work Policy should be utilised to investigate the complaint of bullying. It is my opinion that this should not take more than six weeks to complete.

Until such time as internal procedures have been exhausted this is the only recommendation I can make.