ADJUDICATION OFFICER DECISION
Adjudication Reference: ADJ-00054979
Parties:
| Complainant | Respondent |
Parties | Kelvin Gopaul | Society of St Vincent de Paul |
Representatives | Self-represented | Self-represented |
Complaint:
Act | Complaint Reference No. | Date of Receipt |
Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 7 of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act, 1994 | CA-00067027-001 | 30/10/2024 |
Date of Adjudication Hearing: 07/03/2025
Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer: Catherine Byrne
Procedure:
In accordance with section 41 of the Workplace Relations Act 2015, this complaint was assigned to me by the Director General. I conducted a hearing on March 7th 2025 and gave the parties an opportunity to be heard and to present evidence relevant to the complaint. The complainant, Mr Kelvin Gopaul attended the hearing alone and represented himself. His former employer, the Society of St Vincent de Paul, was represented by the HR business partner, Ms Jennifer Curry, the finance services manager, Ms Amanda Pluck and the HR generalist, Mr Lar Whelan.
While the parties are named in this Decision, from here on, I will refer to Mr Gopaul as “the complainant” and to the Society of St Vincent De Paul as “the respondent.”
Background:
The complainant is a qualified accountant and he commenced employment with the respondent as a finance officer on July 15th 2024. He resigned on August 30th 2024. In a complaint concerning a breach of s.3 of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994, he claims that the job that he was interviewed for is not the job that he was required to do when he commenced in the role. |
Summary of Complainant’s Case:
At the hearing, the complainant provided a comprehensive background to the issue that concerns him and which initiated his complaint to the WRC. He was employed as a finance officer, but from his start date in the job, he claims that he had to wait for someone to tell him what to do every day and he didn’t do the tasks on his job description. He complained also that he wasn’t allocated a desk for himself, and that he had to sit at whatever desk was available and that this didn’t provide for a comfortable life at work. He also complained that he was told that he would have to wait for three months before he was permitted to work from home for part of the week. |
Findings and Conclusions:
In advance of the hearing of this matter, the complainant provided a copy of the job specification for a finance officer. He also provided a copy of his terms and conditions of employment. These documents were issued to him before he started in the job on July 15th 2024. The complainant argues that his job didn’t turn out to be as it was described in the job description. In response to questions from me, he said that he wasn’t asked to do anything that wasn’t related to the job of a finance officer. His complaint is that he was asked to cover for other finance staff who were absent and that his actual working life didn’t match the job description for the role. At the hearing, I explained to the complainant that a job description is not a legal document and that the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 has no reference to a job description. From the perspective of this legislation, the important issue of compliance is a written statement of an employee’s terms and conditions of employment, often referred to as a contract. The complainant provided me with a comprehensive document with the details of his terms and conditions of employment clearly set out. I am satisfied that the respondent has complied with s.3 of the 1994 Act and that this complaint about a breach of the Act is misconceived. |
Decision:
Section 41 of the Workplace Relations Act 2015 requires that I make a decision in relation to the complaint in accordance with the relevant redress provisions under Schedule 6 of that Act.
I decide that this complaint is not well founded because it is misconceived. |
Dated: 14th of March 2025
Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer: Catherine Byrne
Key Words:
Statement of terms and conditions of employment |