Workplace Commission Weekly Breakdown
To everyone who has now subscribed to WorkplaceDisputes.ie, some of you will already have had close contact with our services through WhatsApp, phone calls, and whatever communication was necessary for us to understand your situation and bring forward your complaint against your employer. On a weekly basis, I will break down decisions from the Workplace Relations Commission, explain what was decided and why, and connect those decisions to situations that regularly arise among the people who come to us.
The first point that must be understood is that the WRC operates according to specific time limits. In most cases, a complaint must be submitted within six months of the act being complained of. The WRC may extend that period to 12 months where reasonable cause is shown, but an extension should never be assumed.
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For that reason, every action that you consider to have contravened one of your rights, a policy established by the company, or an obligation that the employer is expected to follow should be properly recorded. Keep emails, messages, contracts, payslips, meeting invitations, policies, and your own notes of what happened and when it happened.
Where you have someone to bounce your ideas off, discuss the situation with that person before deciding whether and how you will interact with your employer. The objective should be to understand the action, identify what was inappropriate, and decide how it can be challenged in a constructive manner.
From what we see, many complaints fail even where the employee may have had an underlying right. This often happens because the complaint was submitted outside the relevant time limit or was framed around an event that did not properly capture when the contravention occurred. The best advice I can give at the beginning of this publication is therefore straightforward: record what happened and seek advice quickly.
We created this page to provide a space where WRC decisions can be explained in a way that is easier for the general public to understand. The first decision concerns terms of employment, which is one of the areas employers appear to contravene most often. Sometimes no contract is provided. In other situations, the employee signs a document at the beginning of the employment and is never given proper access to it again. When an issue later arises, the employee is left in a grey area. The employer may refer to procedures, duties, working hours, or conditions that the employee has no way of verifying.
The decision
The first decision concerns a worker I represented who began working as a general operative and was later promoted to night duty manager. His job title, pay, working hours, shift pattern, and responsibilities changed, but the employer did not provide an amended statement confirming those changes. The employer later produced a general document that had been issued to all employees. The WRC found that this document was closer to an employee handbook and did not set out the terms that applied to the employee’s particular role. The WRC also found that the employer should have confirmed in writing matters including the employee’s new title, rate of pay, night shift hours, breaks, any trial period, and the rate applying to overtime.
The complaint was upheld, and the employer was ordered to pay €3,316, equivalent to four weeks’ gross pay. The award was made for the breach of a statutory right and was therefore not subject to deductions for tax, PRSI, or USC. The compensation available in a terms of employment complaint is limited, but the importance of the right should still be understood. When your role, pay, hours, or responsibilities change, ask for the changes in writing, keep a record of that request, and do not wait until a wider dispute has already developed. The full decision can be accessed here.