Employee

Employer

Anonymised Parties

A Construction Inspector

A Local Authority

Representatives

Represented by Himself

Represented by Management

Act

Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

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

IR - SC - 00000960

19/12/2022

The employee joined the local authority as an apprentice bricklayer in 1980.  He was aged 15 at the time.  He is now an inspector in one of the council’s operations divisions.  He plans to retire on his 65th birthday in February 2025.

This is a dispute about the employee’s application to reduce his working hours to four days a week until he retires.

At the hearing, the employee said that, in November 2019, he applied to move to a four-day week.  He said that his mother is 89 and that it would help him to provide care to her if he had a day off every week.  If he could nominate Monday as his non-working day, this would mean that, taking account of annual leave and public holidays, he would work 42 days less a year, with a reduction of 42 days’ pay.

The employee’s application to reduce his working week was refused.  At the time, he said that he didn’t appeal against the decision because he realised that the reduction would have had an effect on his pension.  By 2020, he had completed 40 years of service and the reduction wouldn’t have a significant impact on his pension, so in 2022, he applied again for a shorter working week.  Again, his application was refused by an executive manager in his division.  When he appealed this decision to the HR department, due to the operational needs of the section in which he worked, the decision of the executive manager was upheld.  For this reason, on December 21st 2022, he submitted this dispute to the WRC.

The members of the management team who attended the hearing outlined the background to their decision not to permit the employee to reduce his working hours.  The employee is the principal manager / supervisor of his area of operations and he is responsible for two construction crews comprising 11 people.  He has a complex, technical job, ensuring that the work of the crews is compliant with statutory instruments and codes of practice of the Health and Safety Authority, as well as compliance with temporary traffic management and dealing with the hazards associated with underground services.

The decision not to grant the employee his request for a reduced working week is due to the operational requirements of his section and the uncertainly arising from the transition of water services to Irish Water and the implementation of the Framework for the Future Delivery of Water Services.  This Framework will involve the transfer of employees working in water services to Irish Water, with employees assigned to the maintenance of gullies and flood relief remaining with the council. 

There are challenges associated with back-filling for the employee on the day he is out of work, and these were outlined to me at the hearing.  The work-sharing partner identified to fill in for the employee must be able to do so without having a negative impact on the operations in other parts of the division.  A suitable partner has not yet been identified who could back-fill for the employee for 42 days a year.

At the hearing, the management informed me that the effective date for the transfer of water services to Irish Water is September 13th this year and the council then has three months to separate non-water services work from the headcount associated with the service-level agreement with Irish Water.  It is expected that, by mid-December this year, there will be greater certainty regarding who goes where in the division and the managers committed to looking constructively at the employee’s application for a shorter working week at that stage.

I am mindful of the challenges associated with trying to facilitate a request for a shorter working week, without affecting the services provided by the council, and without risk to the quality of work and the safety of staff and the public.  In the case of this employee, he has worked for the council since he was a young boy, and it is my view that he should be supported to transition into his retirement by reducing his working week as he has requested.  One of the reasons he is seeking this flexibility is to support his mother and it is my view that he should be given the opportunity and the leisure to do so.  I am grateful to the managers for their positive indication that they will look constructively at his request in December this year, so that the employee can commence working a shorter week by the beginning of January 2024.

I accept that, in the middle of the summer of 2023, six months is a long time out of a remaining 18 months of employment.  I think it is important however, to give the management time to sort out the issues arising from the transfer of water services to Irish Water and to use the opportunity of the changes to facilitate the employee’s request.

I recommend that the management gives every consideration to facilitating this employee’s application to work a four-day week to commence no later than January 2024. 

Shorter working week