Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Sharon  Garvey

Pro Cabs

Representatives

  N/A

 N/A

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 8 of the Unfair Dismissals Act, 1977

CA-00052469-001

30/08/2022

The Complainant started work as a dispatch operator with the Respondent on 20 December 2018 and earned €240 per week. She stated that she considered herself to be dismissed when she was notified by the Revenue Commissioners on 25 May 2022 that her employment had been ceased by the Respondent on 1 January 2022. This was disputed by the Respondent who claimed that the Complainant resigned on 23 January 2022.

The Complainant started work as a dispatch operator with the Respondent on 20 December 2018, based in their offices in the Claddagh, Galway. She stated that she was temporarily laid off because of the Covid lockdown on 13 March 2020 and subsequently tried to contact the Respondent on numerous occasions after this to ascertain what work opportunities were available. She also stated that she saw jobs advertised on Facebook for the Respondent’s operations in their other office in Prospect Hill, Galway in November 2021 and asserted that she should have been contacted in relation to these vacancies.  As a result of the Respondent’s failure to make contact with her, she sent a text message to Patricia Murphy on 23 January 2022 seeking her P45 because she wanted to see if the request would provoke a reaction.

The Respondent’s witness, Ms Patricia Murphy, stated that the Complainant contacted her via text message on 23 January 2022 seeking her P45. She stated that she understood from this message that the Complainant was resigning and contacted her accountant on foot of it, who processed the resignation.

Preliminary Issue

The Law

Section 8 of the Unfair Dismissals Act 1993 states the following in respect of time limits:

A claim for redress under this Act shall be initiated by giving a notice in writing (containing such particulars (if any) as may be specified in regulations under subsection (17) of section 41 of the Act of 2015) to the Director General—

(a) within the period of 6 months beginning on the date of the relevant dismissal, or

(b) within such period not exceeding 12 months from the date of the relevant dismissal as the adjudication officer considers appropriate, in circumstances where the adjudication officer is satisfied that the giving of the notice within the period referred to in paragraph (a) was prevented due to reasonable cause,

Findings

I note the Complainant’s evidence that although she sent a text message to the Respondent on 23 January 2022 which stated, “send me my P45 please thank you”, she only did so because she had heard nothing from the Respondent in many months regarding her employment and wanted to see if the text message request would provoke a reaction from them. She denied that the text message of 23 January 2022 constituted a resignation and stated that she did not consider her employment to have been terminated until she received a message from the Revenue Commissioners on 25 May 2022, in reply to an email from her, stating that her employment had been ceased by the Respondent on 1 January 2022.

Although I accept that the Revenue Commissioners informed the Complainant via email on 25 May 2022 that her employment had ceased on 1 January 2022, this was likely a systems issue as she had not been paid at all for the month. In examining whether the text message of 23 January 2022 constituted a resignation, I note that while it was certainly odd that the Respondent did not reply to the message, I am satisfied that the request from the Complainant was clear, and it was reasonable for the Respondent to regard this as her resignation, as Ms Murphy stated in her evidence. I also noted that while the Complainant, during her evidence, repeatedly admonished the Respondent for not having maintained contact with her while she was on lay off to keep her apprised of the work situation, there was an equal onus on her to keep in touch with the Respondent during the period. Specifically, although she made much of the fact that the Respondent was seeking dispatch operators for its office in Prospect Hill, Galway in November 2021 but did not contact her, I cannot understand why on seeing the advertisements, she did not contact the Respondent herself. Indeed, I note that there was only evidence given of one text message having been sent by the Complainant on 23 July 2020 to inquire about her work situation over the entire period of her lay off from March 2020 until January 2022.

In light of the foregoing, I do not consider it credible that the Complainant sent a text message to the Respondent on 23 January 2022 to provoke a response and find instead that it constituted her immediate resignation.

As I have found that the Complainant terminated her employment on 23 January 2022 and this complaint was not referred to the Workplace Relations Commission until 30 August 2022, more than six months after the termination of her employment, I find that I do not have jurisdiction to hear the complaint in accordance with section 8 of the Act above.

I do not have jurisdiction to hear the complaint for the reasons set out above.