Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Brigid  Walsh

PV Generation Limited

Representatives

  Self-represented

 Company management.

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 6 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1991

CA-00044735-001

22/06/2021

The Complainant commenced employment with the Respondent on 6th July 2020, she was employed as a Project Manager. Employment ended on 18th March 2021.

This complaint was received by the Workplace Relations Commission on 22nd June 2021.

The Complainant commenced employment with the Respondent on 6th July 2020, she was employed as a Project Manager.

Due to the covid pandemic the salaries of staff were reduced by 30% in January 2021. At this time the Complainant received the following letter in January 2021.

It is with regret that, due to the current ongoing pandemic caused by Coronavirus (COVID19) the company now has to notify you that you are being put on a temporary deferred salary of 30% in accordance with your agreement, with effect from Monday 11th January 2021, from €1154 gross to €807.80 gross.

This will be reviewed by the company directors by the 31s' January 2021 if nationwide restrictions are lifted. We will notify you as soon as you can be placed back on a full-rime salary. All terms and conditions will remain the same as per your contract. As agreed with directors the Salary of €1154 will be reinstated on the 30th April 2021. Deferred salary owed for months January to April 2021 will also be paid on the on 30th  April 2021.

The Company undertakes to reimburse any outstanding salary due irrespective of its circumstances. The company thanks you for your commitment and support during this time.

The Complainant resigned from employment without giving the Respondent notice of such resignation.

The Respondent withheld the reimbursement of monies owed to the Complainant.

The Complainant resigned From PV Generation with immediate effect from 18th March 2021with no notice. She was employed as a Project Manager and this was a senior role looking after all commercial scale PV projects. It is crucial for the notice to be worked and a handover provided. No notice was worked, this left a company director having to try and take over her duties. The named director Richard Linger had to back-fill her role and resolve outstanding issues at significant cost to the company. We refer to our company policy below on this matter (Page 14 of employeehandbook-Termination of Employment). Estimated efforts required to unravel the details on a portfolio of over 50 leads and client contacts is estimated at 10 days - €2500.

The Employee Handbook contains the following clause and this handbook forms part of the employment contract:

A)  TERMINATING EMPLOYMENT WITHOUT GIVING NOTICE

If you terminate your employment without giving or working the required period of notice, as indicated in your individual Statement of Main Terms of Employment, you will have an amount equal to any additional cost of covering your duties during the notice period not worked deducted from any termination pay due to you. This is an express written term of your contract of employment.

There was deliberate damage that was caused by the Complainant in deleting customer files from the Respondent’s share point database only days prior to her resignation resulting in survey notes and files being deleted for upcoming projects and installs resulting in time and money lost on the companies’ behalf. This in turn cost the company…€2000….. in costs to re-evaluate these jobs for installation (8 days work).

The PV Generation company laptop was wiped of all data by the Complainant on her departure. All said data belonged to the company and was crucial for the future of all projects in which the Complainant had been working on. We worked on trying to retrieve all data with no avail and in turn cost the company …€500….. in costs (2-person days’ work). We refer to our policy below on this matter.

B)  CONFIDENTIALITY

All information that:

a. is or has been acquired by you during, or in the course of your employment, or has otherwise been acquired by you in confidence,

b. relates particularly to our business, clients or that of other persons or bodies with whom we have dealings of any sort, and

c. has not been made public by, or with our authority,

shall be confidential, and (save in the course of our business or as required by law) you shall not at any time, whether before or after the termination of your employment, disclose such information to any person without our written consent.

You are to exercise reasonable care to keep safe all documentary or other material containing confidential information and shall at the time of termination of your employment with us, or at any other time upon demand, return to us any such material in your possession.

You must make yourself aware of our policies on data protection in relation to personal data and ensure compliance with them at all times.

The Complainant sent the emails to notify management that a large-scale installation job was completed at Hanlon Transport. The connection agreement on the project was for zero export and on her departure the management were then made aware that the Complainant did not proceed with the smart export metre on this installation as instructed, the Complainant had no permissions to do so, nor did she notify management of this and in turn caused serious issues for the install and multiple site visits and extra cost to the company in the amount of the meter, installation and client management. Cost (meter/CTs 400 Labour 750 = 1150)

The Complainant was provided all the attached documents on the 14th September 2020. We received no returned signed copies.

There was follow up for signed copies on the 22nd October 2020. Still no signed copies were provided.

Again, on the 9th Dec 2020 there was follow up when the Complainant eventually came back with the email but again no signed copies.

The Complainant continued to collect her pay by means of bank transfer in arrears weekly and so accepted all terms of her employment and PV Generation policies within the employee handbook.

PV Generation deducted from the monies owed to the Complainant from her deferred salary agreement.

Monies owed to Brigid: €3808.20

Monies owed to PV Generation: €6960

Section 5 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1991 reads as follows:

5. (1) An employer shall not make a deduction from the wages of an employee (or receive any payment from an employee) unless –

(b) the deduction (or payment) is required or authorised to be made by virtue of a term of the employee’s contract of employment included in the contract before, and in force at the time of, the deduction or payment, or…….

At the hearing of the complaint it was stated by the Respondent that the employee was issued with a Statement of Main Terms of Employment which contains a clause on the terminating employment with giving notice:

TERMINATING EMPLOYMENT WITHOUT GIVING NOTICE

If you terminate your employment without giving or working the required period of notice, as indicated in your individual Statement of Main Terms of Employment, you will have an amount equal to any additional cost of covering your duties during the notice period not worked deducted from any termination pay due to you. This is an express written term of your contract of employment.

In view of this clause I am satisfied that the Respondent has not breached the Payment of Wages Act, 1991 and therefore I have to find that the complaint as presented is not well founded.