FULL DECISION
SECTION 44, WORKPLACE RELATIONS ACT 2015 PAYMENT OF WAGES ACT 1991 PARTIES: FALLON AND BYRNE AND KELVIN GOPAUL DIVISION:
Appeal of Adjudication Officer Decision No's: ADJ-00045099 (CA-00055168-001).
This is an appeal of an Adjudication Officer’s Decision made pursuant to Section 7(1) of the Payment of Wages Act, 1991. The appeal was heard by the Labour Court on January 03 2024 in accordance with Section 44 of the Workplace Relations Act, 2015. The following is the Court's Decision.
This is an appeal by Kelvin Gopaul (“the Complainant”) against a Decision of an Adjudication Officer (ADJ-00045099, dated 22 November 2023) made under the Payment of Wages Act 1991(“the Act”) against his employer Fallon and Byrne (“the Respondent”). The Adjudication Officer found that the complaint under the Act was out of time and therefore statue barred. The Complainant lodged an appeal to the Labour Court on 23 November 2023.
Preliminary Matter – Time Limits A preliminary matter was raised with the Court relating to the relevant time limits for lodging a complaint under the Act. The Complainant was employed with the Respondent from November 2019 to January 2021. He lodged his complaint under the Act to the Workplace Relations Commission on 17 February 2023. The Complainant acknowledges the significant delay in lodging his complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission. He told the Court that he hoped that the matter in dispute could be resolved directly with the Respondent. In support of his appeal, he relies on the Statute of Limitations Act 1957, which provides for a six-year time limit for lodging complaints. The Respondent’s position is that the complaint before the Court is statute-barred and has no legal standing. The Complainant’s employment ended in January 2021. The alleged breaches of the Act occurred during the operation of the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme in July 2021. As a result, the complaint falls well outside the time-limits specified in the relevant legislation.
The Applicable Law The relevant statutes to the within appeal are the Workplace Relations Act 2015 and the Payment of Wages Act 1991. Section 41 of the Workplace Relations Act, 2015, sets out provisions in relation to time limits for lodging complaints at first instance and provides as follows: “(6) Subject to subsection (8), an adjudication officer shall not entertain a complaint referred to him or her under this section if it has been presented to the Director General after the expiration of the period of 6 months beginning on the date of the contravention to which the complaint relates.” “(8) An adjudication officer may entertain a complaint or dispute to which this section applies presented or referred to the Director General after the expiration of the period referred to in subsection (6) or (7) (but not later than 6 months after such expiration), as the case may be, if he or she is satisfied that the failure to present the complaint or refer the dispute within that period was due to reasonable cause.” Section 5 of the Payment of Wages Act 1991 provides as follows: (1) An employer shall not make a deduction from the wages of an employee (or receive any payment from an employee) unless– (a) the deduction (or payment) is required or authorised to be made by virtue of any statute or any instrument made under statute, (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 (c) in the case of a deduction, the employee has given his prior consent in writing to it. (6) Where— (a) the total amount of any wages that are paid on any occasion by an employer to an employee is less than the total amount of wages that is properly payable by him to the employee on that occasion (after making any deductions therefrom that fall to be made and are in accordance with this Act), or (b) none of the wages that are properly payable to an employee by an employer on any occasion (after making any such deductions as aforesaid) are paid to the employee, then, except in so far as the deficiency or non-payment is attributable to an error of computation, the amount of the deficiency or non-payment shall be treated as a deduction made by the employer from the wages of the employee on the occasion.
Decision The Workplace Relations Act 2015 at section 41(6) specifies the time limit that applies for lodging complaints under certain employment rights enactments, including the Payment of Wages Act 1991. That provision specifies that a complaint cannot be entertained by an Adjudication Officer, or by the Labour Court on appeal, unless it is presented “after the expiration of the period of 6 months beginning on the date of the contravention to which the complaint relates”. In other words, the 2015 Act requires that to ground a claim under the Payment of Wages Act a complainant must set out specific contraventions of the Act that occurred in the six-month period before lodging a claim. The six-month timeframe may be extended by a further six-month period if the failure to present the complaint in time was due to reasonable cause. No application was made to extend the timeframe by a further six months for reasonable cause. As the Complainant in this case lodged his complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission on 17 February 2023, the relevant period for consideration by the Court when ascertaining what alleged contraventions of the Act occurred, is the six-month period from 18 August 2022 to 17 February 2023. It is accepted that the Complainant left the employment of the Respondent on 11 January 2021. The Complainant told the Court that he delayed submitting his complaint under the Act to the Workplace Relations Commission for more than two years as he was hopeful that he could resolve the matter directly with the Respondent. He acknowledged that no contravention of the Act occurred during the cognisable period for the complaint. As no contravention of the Act occurred within the cognisable period for his compliant, the Complainant was unable to establish any legal basis for his claim. Having regard to the above, the Court is satisfied that the Complainant’s complaint was presented to the Workplace Relations Commission outside of the relevant statutory time limit provided. The Court is of the view that the limitation periods set out in the Workplace Relations Act 2015 are clear and precise and it is confined to those limitation periods. The Labour Court is a creature of statute, and its powers and duties are derived solely from statute. The Court cannot assume a jurisdiction which has not been conferred to it by statute and does not have a ‘discretion’ to vary the time limits set down in relevant statutes. Clearly, a failure on the part of a Complainant to present a complaint in time deprives the Adjudication Officer, and this Court on appeal, of jurisdiction to hear the claim. As a result, the Court finds that it has no jurisdiction to hear the complaint.
Decision For the reasons set out above, the Court determines that the within complaint is not well founded. The Decision of the Adjudication Officer is upheld. The Court so decides.
NOTE Enquiries concerning this Decision should be addressed to Aidan Ralph, Court Secretary. |
