DHL ordered to pay redundancy to worker who faced 5-hour bus commute to new site when warehouse closed
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has upheld a complaint under the Redundancy Payments Act 1967 against DHL Supply Chain Limited by stock picker Oscar Solano Fernandez, who lost his job of 15 years after bosses decided to shut down and sell off a warehouse in Clondalkin, Dublin 22.
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Irish Examiner
7 days ago
- Irish Examiner
Labour Court to hear X appeal of payout for unfair dismissal to former Irish executive
The main Irish unit of Elon Musk's X will commence its appeal at the Labour Court on Tuesday against a ruling that it must pay out an Irish record unfair dismissal award of €550,131 to a former executive. In the ruling last August, Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator, Michael MacNamee found that Twitter International UC - since renamed X Internet Unlimited Company - unfairly dismissed the company's former Director Source to Pay, Gary Rooney in December 2022 after he failed to respond to Elon Musk's 'Fork in the Road' email. Mr Rooney has yet to receive any of the monies as the case is before the Labour Court on appeal from Twitter International UC. The published Labour Court diary confirms that the Labour Court has set aside hearing days for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week at the Labour Court's Dublin HQ for the appeal. Solicitor for Mr Rooney, Barry Kenny of Kenny Sullivan Solicitors in Bray declined to comment on Monday ahead of the appeal. However, commenting last month on the impending Labour Court hearing, Mr Kenny said: 'My client is anxious to put all this all behind him.' He said last month: 'The WRC determined that X's treatment of him as a long standing and loyal employee amounted to an unfair dismissal. Mr Rooney is anxious that the Labour Court will affirm this decision.' Mr Kenny said: 'It is open to the Labour Court to increase or reduce sums awarded in the WRC as it will be a De Novo hearing.' He said last month that X had advised that they intend to call at least three witnesses while Mr Rooney is the only witness in his own case. At the WRC, Twitter International UC fully contested Mr Rooney's claim, over five days of hearing, contending that he had resigned voluntarily. In his findings, Mr MacNamee found that Mr Rooney was dismissed because he did not click 'yes' to Elon Musk's 'Fork in the Road' email on November 16, 2022 and for that reason alone. On November 16, 2022, Mr Rooney and the Twitter workforce received an email from the world's richest man, Mr Musk who said: 'To build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing a grade." Mr Musk said: 'If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below.' After Mr Rooney opted not to click 'yes' on the link, three days later on November 19, 2022, Mr Rooney received a further company email which stated that it is 'to acknowledge your decision to resign and accept the voluntary separation offer'. On receiving Mr Musk's 'Fork in the Road' email, Mr Rooney said his first reaction was disbelief and he was initially afraid even to open it for fear that it was spam or malware. The record €550,131 award was made up of Mr Rooney's remuneration losses of €350,131 from January 2023 to May 2024 and estimated future remuneration losses of €200,000. The remuneration losses were based on Mr Rooney's Twitter remuneration of €323,560 made up of €151,225 in pay and €172,335 in deferred cash consideration. Mr Rooney secured a new role with an employer in the banking sector in September 2023 on total remuneration of €129,897.
RTÉ News
24-07-2025
- RTÉ News
WRC finds Fair City photographer was not a freelancer
RTÉ has failed to have employment rights claims by the former on-set photographer for Fair City thrown out, after the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) ruled, for the first time, that a supposed freelancer at the national broadcaster was actually an employee. The statutory complaints were brought by photographer, Beta Bajgart, who was previously the subject of commentary at the Public Accounts Committee when it emerged the national broadcaster was paying €60,000 per year for promotional images of the Dublin-based soap opera. Ms Bajgart's case against RTÉ under the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003, the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 and the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 will now proceed to a full hearing, following a preliminary ruling today. It is the first WRC case where the principles of a major Supreme Court ruling in 2023 on the distinction between employees and contractors have been applied to the position of a worker at RTÉ. The alleged misclassification of media workers as freelance contractors by RTÉ is a major legacy issue at the national broadcaster. She claims her job as a photographer on the set of RTÉ's flagship soap opera was terminated without notice on 15 December 2023. The broadcaster's lawyers had argued Ms Bajgart was not an employee, but a freelance contractor - giving the employment tribunal "no jurisdiction" her complaints. Adjudication officer Catherine Byrne noted that Ms Bajgart suffered "negative commentary" in September 2023 after attention was drawn to Ms Bajgart's role following a hearing of the Oireachtas Public Accounts committee, which had been scrutinising RTÉ's finances. In the wake of the publicity, Ms Bajgart's solicitors wrote to RTÉ asserting that she had acquired a contract of indefinite duration and was an employee, the tribunal noted. The broadcaster's director of human resources replied that RTÉ's relationship with the photographer was "not an employment relationship" but that she was "a supplier of services". Ms Bajgart was first engaged for the work as an independent contractor for a year starting in June 2011 at €750 a week. There were repeated renewals of the contract and Ms Bajgart won tender competitions in 2017 and 2019, with the rate for the job rising to €980 a week over that period, the tribunal noted. However, Ms Bajgart did not apply when the work was put out to tender again in September 2023, and ultimately ceased working on the Fair City set on 15 December 2023, when the tender process was readvertised, the adjudicator noted. Ms Bajgart gave evidence that she was interviewed for the job in 2011 and "got the contract", with "no discussion about the legal implications". She explained that she set the rate for the job based on her previous work for another production, Off the Rails. Addressing a gap in her contracts between 14 October 2018 and 21 January 2019, Ms Bajgart said she "simply continued to work" and got paid. Her barrister, Michael O'Doherty BL, who appeared instructed by Conor McCrave of Setanta Solicitors, asked if she had "consented to doing the job as an independent contractor. Ms Bajgart replied: "I wanted the job," and added that it was "never offered" to her as a position of employment. Under cross-examination from RTÉ's solicitor, Louise O'Byrne of Arthur Cox, asked Ms Bajgart whether she had done other work while engaged for Fair City. Ms Bajgart said she ran her freelance business around the Fair City shot list and that it was difficult to look for clients because she never knew when she was due on set. Ms O'Byrne also referred to a letter sent by the complainant to the Irish Times and the Irish Independent in September 2023 following remarks by Fine Gael senator Micheál Carrigy about Ms Bajgart's, in which the complainant had stated: "The photographer on RTÉ's Fair City is an independent contractor." Ms O'Byrne argued this showed the claimant "did not consider herself as an employee" of RTÉ. Mr O'Doherty said she had described herself as an independent contractor "because she did not want to upset her employer and potentially lose her job by publicly describing herself as an employee". Adjudication officer Catherine Byrne wrote that the "day-to-day reality" of Ms Bajgart's working relationship with RTÉ was "not consistent with how she was described in her contract as 'a supplier' and 'not an employee'". Ms Byrne noted that Ms Bajgart had been working 20 hours a week, part-time, for 12 years on "a series of fixed-term contracts" in a role which "contributes to the promotion and success" of Fair City. The worker had had a desk on set, "no discretion" about her level of attendance there, and could only work elsewhere three or four hours a week, and performed the work personally 95% of the time, Ms Byrne said. There were limits to Ms Bajgart's "artistic independence" and her freedom to alter her way of working in a bid to increase her earnings, with a fixed weekly rate being paid, Ms Byrne added. Ms Byrne also noted that during a period between October 2018 and January 2019, when there was no contract in place, Ms Bajgart "continued to turn up for work" and got her normal weekly rate "without any dispute". "This continuity of employment, in the absence of a contract, is indicative of a relationship of interdependence and trust, and not that of a commercial agreement," Ms Byrne wrote. "The authors of the agreements… may have genuinely believed that the working relationship with [Ms Bajgart] was that of an independent contractor, at least in the early years," she wrote. "However, it seems to me that the sustained nature of her job and the sole reliance by the respondent on the complainant to do the work, means that the legal basis of the agreement evolved from a supplier's agreement to that of an employee," she added. Ms Byrne wrote that her investigation of Ms Bajgart's status was clouded by the fact the photographer appeared to have "acquiesced" to being classified as self-employed for years - and even described herself as an independent contractor in open letters to two newspapers in 2023. "This acquiescence has no bearing on my conclusion that her relationship with the respondent was that of an employee," the adjudicator wrote.
Irish Times
22-07-2025
- Irish Times
‘Burned out' bra saleswoman wins €15,800 for constructive dismissal
A lingerie saleswoman who said she was forced to quit her job of nearly 20 years over the health impact of workplace stress at due to a 'toxic' work environment at a Dublin department store has won €15,800 for constructive dismissal. Karrin Breslin was awarded the sum on foot of a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against Chantelle Lingerie Ltd, the operator of a concession in the lingerie department of the unidentified store. The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) awarded Ms Breslin her full losses after ruling that the international lingerie brand repudiated her contract of employment by failing to address grievances about understaffing and rostering while her health deteriorated over the course of two years. It was submitted on behalf of Ms Breslin – an employee of the brand since 2004 – that when the department store reopened in May 2021 following the Covid-19 lockdown, her section was down to 12 staff with just two full-time, compared with 10 full-timers out of 17 before the pandemic. READ MORE The tribunal heard Ms Breslin had moved from north Co Dublin to Co Wexford during the pandemic closure. She asked at that stage to be given a set working day of 9am to 5.30pm, she said. Her employer's response was that 'this was not a request that could be granted given the opening hours of the shop and the need for a fair departmental roster', the tribunal was told. The tribunal was told that the department store, rather than the lingerie brand, was responsible for setting the roster governing Ms Breslin's working hours. 'I feel my mental and physical health has deteriorated ... I don't have a good work/life balance and it's going to get worse due to the late closing times coming back again,' she wrote. Ms Breslin's case was that her job was made 'overwhelming and physically hard' because of these issues and that she began to experience anxiety, low mood, high blood pressure and gastrointestinal problems 'as a result of work-related stress'. Following a medical absence in June 2022, Ms Breslin again wrote to her employer and set out that because the department was so 'understaffed' that sales were being lost because customers were walking out without being served. Her employer's position was this was 'a commercial point and not a personal grievance'. Ms Breslin had seven periods of certified medical leave between January 2022 and the summer of 2023, the tribunal heard. In an exchange of emails with her employer during her fifth period of medical leave in June 2023, Ms Breslin said she believed her illness was 'work-related'. 'There are major obstacles stopping me from doing a good job and this has been going on for years. It's got far worse in the last 4 months and definitely having a negative impact on my working life due to a stressful and sometimes toxic work environment,' she wrote. In responding correspondence, she was told: 'I am hoping you can get to the bottom of your sickness so you feel better,' the WRC heard. The tribunal heard that Ms Breslin worked her last shift on 25th June 2023 and ultimately did not return to work before she tendered her resignation on 31st October that year. Chantelle's managing director, who gave evidence, said she had assumed Ms Breslin would return to her job when she got better and that her resignation 'was pleasant and made no mention of issues or other employees' behaviour'. When it was put to her in cross-examination that Ms Breslin had told her she was 'burned out', the managing director said she 'understood there was an issue' of work-related stress but that she 'did not relate this' to Ms Breslin's resignation. Asked what she had done to respond to the staffing issues raised by Ms Breslin, the managing director said these were 'a matter for the shop'. In her decision, adjudicator Patricia Owens wrote Ms Breslin had been raising 'serious concerns for her physical and mental health' starting in October 2021. While the managing director made efforts to resolve 'minor issues' for Ms Breslin around medical certs and annual leave, 'more complex matters' around roster problems and staff shortages 'were never addressed', Ms Owens wrote. 'I consider that the respondent failed in its duty of care to the complainant to protect her health, safety and wellbeing while at work,' Ms Owens wrote. She considered the firm's failure to respond adequately to amount to 'repudiation of contract', upholding Ms Breslin's unfair dismissal claim. Ms Owens awarded the claimant €15,800, her full losses for five months' unemployment. A further complaint of disability discrimination under the Employment Equality Act was ruled out of time by the Commission. Ms Breslin was represented by Aisling Irish of Parker Law Solicitors in the case, while human resources consultancy Tom Smyth and Associates appeared for the employer.
