A secretary who was fired after a split with her boss’s son – a manager in the family business where she worked – is to be paid nearly €22,000 after the Workplace Relations Commission ruled her dismissal unfair.
The labor tribunal ruled that there was a “sharp lack of duty of care” on the part of the company and that the employee, who had worked there for more than ten years, “deserved better”.
Rosemarie Quinlan’s claim under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against Spencer Family Holdings Limited was affirmed in a decision published this morning by the Workplace Relations Commission.
Ms Quinlan said she had been a secretary for the company from 2010 to November 2020 and was the former partner of a director in the company, named only as Mr Y in the decision.
She said relations with Mr Y had “broken down” in June 2019 and had been told to “go home” by the company’s senior director and her former partner.
The court has been informed that she was placed on covid-19-related leave in March 2020 and that the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme was used.
Ms Quinlan said she had not received her pay at the end of October 2020 and raised this with the company.
“No one seemed to know anything,” she said.
She told the court that she was then told that a letter had been sent and that she would receive holiday pay.
Her attorney, Tom Kelly BL, who appeared to have been instructed by David Burke & Co Solicitors, sent an email from the firm to his client stating that Ms Quinlan’s employment had been terminated “due to a recession in our firm” as of 25 September of that year.
The letter stated that the holiday pay would follow in the last monthly salary package and a reference was offered.
The email stated a date of “August 28, 2020”, but Ms Quinlan said she received the message “a day after” her inquiry to the company after her wages were not paid as expected on October 28 or 29 of that year .
Bailiff Patsy Doyle noted that prior to the hearing in July this year, the company had applied for an adjournment and was refused, but did not appear.
Ms Quinlan said she was “shocked” to learn of her resignation and that she had a 10-week gap before she could receive Social Security benefits.
She said that as a result she had accumulated rent arrears and had difficulty finding new work.
Her proof was that she had not resigned.
Mr Kelly argued that his client’s dismissal was “completely unjustified” and that it “did not reflect a work-based event”.
He said his client had not been paid for the month of October 2020, or for her accrued annual leave and notice period.
She wrote that she believed the company would have “showed respect for the WRC hearing” by sending a representative in view of “the variety of contact names attributed to the company” in her correspondence with the case officer of the tribunal.
Ms. Doyle recorded a “no show” and proceeded with the hearing in the absence of the respondent.
She noted that in April and June of last year there had been correspondence from the company disputing Ms. Quinlan’s salary and that she had been fired alleging that Ms. Quinlan had resigned voluntarily.
A statement from the company said Ms. Quinlan was “absent from work for 10 months”.
“It was essentially felt that Rose [Ms Quinlan] had left the job of his own accord,” the company president wrote.
“He then set out a background of personal difficulties, with the complainant, who had been in a relationship with his son, being a party to a formal termination of the relationship,” Ms Doyle wrote.
The statement added that the company would “comply fully with any order of the WRC”.
In her decision, Ms Doyle wrote that the company had relied on “two completely different reasons” for the termination of employment and that she had received neither “a certificate of discharge … nor an acknowledgment of discharge”.
She found that the complainant had been dismissed and that, in the absence of the defendant, she could not have established that there were “substantial reasons or reasonable circumstances” for the dismissal.
“All in all, I found a sharp lack of the duty of care I had expected in an employer-employee relationship. I appreciate that the Covid-19 era challenged everyone and was unprecedented. However, the complainant had long been an employee who deserved better,” Ms Doyle wrote.
The company “was seriously lacking in best practice and respect for the complainant, both as an employee and [an] associated relative,” Ms Doyle wrote.
“The law does not allow abstinence and the residual and lasting effect here is a sense of abandonment by the respondent. The complainant had the right to be heard, which he was denied,” she concluded.
She found the dismissal unfair both substantively and procedurally and issued an order against Spencer Family Holdings Limited to pay Ms Quinlan €21,980, an amount equivalent to 14 months salary.
“I have arrived at this figure in response to the deep procedural loophole in the case and the impact of this omission on the complainant,” she added, pointing out that it included severance pay, unpaid salary and unpaid holiday entitlements.