LCR23035

PARTIES:

DIVISION:

SUBJECT:

Appeal of Adjudication Officer Decision No's: ADJ-00048617 (CA-00059628 IR-SC-00001931)

BACKGROUND:

The Employee appealed the Adjudication Officer’s Recommendation to the Labour Court on 14 May 2024 in accordance with Section 13(9) of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969.

On 11 April 2024 the Adjudication Officer issued the following Recommendation:

“I note the dispute between the parties centres around the interpretation of circulars which have national application. I find that as provided for in Section 13 of the Act, I do not have jurisdiction to make a recommendation on this dispute”

A Labour Court hearing took place on 21 August 2024.

DECISION:

This matter comes before the Court as an appeal by the worker of a decision of an Adjudication Officer.

The worker retired on 7th May 2023. She had been approved for access to a ‘pre-retirement’ scheme on 7th February 2019 which provided that whereas her service thenceforth would be on a part time basis, her superannuation accruals would be on a notional full time service basis. She retired four years and one month after her entry onto the ‘pre-retirement’ scheme.

In June 2020 she received an estimate of pension from the employer which estimated that she would benefit from the scheme if she retired at sixty years.

When she retired three years and some months later she discovered that the ‘pre-retirement’ scheme required her to have completed five years’ service on the scheme in order to benefit from the scheme.

The employer submitted that the five-year service qualifier was a feature of the scheme which had been clarified to the worker’s trade union in May 2022. The qualifier, it was said, was a feature of the scheme which had retention of staff as its purpose.

The worker clarified to the Court that she was not seeking an interpretation of the circular governing the operation of the scheme as a means of addressing the within trade dispute. Her dispute with her former employer was that she had received an incorrect estimate of her pension entitlements in 2020 which did not accord with her actual pension entitlement upon her retirement three years later.

The employer submitted that the matter of the scheme had been engaged upon with the worker’s trade union in the meantime and the matter had been clarified. It was submitted that the worker had the opportunity to seek a further pension estimate at any time prior to her retirement and that she failed to seek such an estimate at any time after 2020.

The employer submitted that it was not possible to make a concession to her claim which would amount to an alteration to the scheme in her favour on foot of the fact that an estimate, which had been stated at the time to be an estimate only, was not aligned with the actual pension benefit to which she was entitled when she retired three years later.

The Court has considered the submissions of the parties. There is no matter before the Court as regards interpretation of the circular governing the ‘pre-retirement’ scheme. The case is simply that the worker contends that she should be entitled to receive pension benefits in accordance with an estimate of benefit provided to her three years before her retirement rather than the benefits which have been clarified to be actually due to her under the pension scheme and associated ‘pre-retirement’ scheme concerned.

The Court cannot hold the employer to a position that a pension estimate provided to a worker as an estimate rather than an undertaking should be regarded as setting in stone the benefits which will accrue under the terms or rules of a pension scheme or, as in this case, a ‘pre-retirement’ scheme provision associated with such a scheme. This is all the more so the case when it is taken into account that the estimate at issue in this trade dispute was provided in June 2020 and the actual retirement took place approximately three years later.

The Court notes that important clarity as regards the operation of the ‘pre-retirement’ scheme emerged following engagement between the Trade Union and the employer in May 2022. The Court strongly recommends that the employer should review the manner of communication or non-communication of that clarification to the known population of persons availing of the scheme at that time, and that any necessary adjustments to standard arrangements to communicate such matters to affected staff should be made as a matter if urgency.

In all the circumstances, the Court cannot recommend concession of the within claim. The Court does however recommend that the employer should make a gesture to the worker to recognise her service and the disappointment she has suffered at the conclusion of that service. That gesture should take the form of an ex-gratia payment of €5,000 which should be accepted as full and final settlement of the within trade dispute.

The Court so decides.

	Signed on behalf of the Labour Court
	Kevin Foley
FC	______________________
28 August 2024	Chairman

NOTE

Enquiries concerning this Decision should be addressed to Fiona Corcoran, Court Secretary.