Employee awarded €4,500 for not being provided with a contract
The Claimant is a medical practitioner in private practice and also undertakes work for the Respondent. He submitted that he was an employee of the Respondent and that he had not been furnished with a statement of the terms of employment. On the analysis of the facts in this case, the adjudication officer was satisfied that the Claimant was in fact an employee of the Respondent and was not working on a contract for service and awarded the Claimant €4,500 for the breach of his rights under the Act.
Two large awards from WRC due to Employers failure to follow redundancy procedure
In the recent case of A Production Manager v A Printing Company, heard on 2nd February 2019 the adjudicator awarded the Claimant €43,000 in compensation for unfair dismissal. The Adjudicator concluded that the Claimant was not chosen fairly for redundancy and was chosen as a cost saving mechanism as his salary was higher than other employee’s. The Adjudicator was also of the opinion that insufficient time was given to exploring a strategy for addressing the financial situation of the Respondent and also noted that the Claimant was not given an opportunity to submit any alternatives to redundancy.
The second decision of the WRC was that of Emile Daly in the case of A Business Director v A Dairy Company, the Claimant was awarded €35,000 for unfair dismissal. The Claimant was made redundant by the Respondent on 24th July 2017. The Claimant was promoted by the Respondent in order to dismiss him and was soon after replaced by an individual known to the Commercial Director. The Adjudicator agreed that the Claimant had been unfairly dismissed and had to assess the financial losses incurred by the Plaintiff as a result of his dismissal. One such factor was the difficulties encountered by the Claimant to acquire alternative employment since his dismissal.
The Claimant maintained that he had the right to keep the company car after he was dismissed. The Claimant was subsequently arrested for car theft which he maintained directly impacted on his ability to acquire new employment. The Adjudicator noted that the losses from this incident were not a result of his unfair dismissal and therefore only the losses from 1st October 2017 until March 2018, when he was arrested, were considered.
29th March 2019
Anne O’Connell Solicitors
Fitzwilliam Hall, Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2.
www.aocsolicitors.ie
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