An Applegreen service station manager was sacked after a suspected “ghost employee” on its systems turned out to be a real Polish woman with limited English who had spent four months working without wages, the Workplace Relations Commission has heard.
A barrister acting for the chain said that the manager of its service station at Ashbourne, Co Meath, had effectively inflated profits for 2021 by not registering the worker for payroll — and secured himself an increased bonus worth €2,000 gross as a result.
The manager, site director Graham Price, has accused Petrogas Group Ltd, trading as Applegreen, of breaching the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 and the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973 by sacking him for gross misconduct following an investigation into the matter.
His lawyers maintain the delay in “onboarding” the worker was because she had no PPS number when hired in October 2021 and that her application to register had been affected by a backlog in issuing them in the wake of the cyberattack on the Health Service Executive the previous May.
Giving evidence to the tribunal last Friday, Applegreen regional manager Keith Ennis explained that he had gone to the Ashbourne service station in February 2022 to carry out an audit and discovered discrepancies between its point-of-sale system records and the payroll report for the period.
“Basically what I’m checking is are all the employees on our till system for a period of time; were they actually in work at the time? It’s to check for ghost employees,” he told adjudicator Brian Dalton.
Mr Ennis said his main concern in this part of the audit was “people stealing money” but that when he identified the discrepancy he pulled out records for previous weeks.
“When this was uncovered I asked, I think, the assistant manager who was there conducting the audit with me: ‘Where is this lady? Is she okay?’”
“Why were you concerned?” asked the group’s barrister Hugh O’Flaherty.
“I just found out she hadn’t been paid for a long period of time. I’d never come across someone who hadn’t been paid for a 16-week period. By all accounts, this could have been a ghost employee. I’d never heard of this lady before, except she’s on a point-of-sale till login, but not connected to payroll,” he said.
“She was available; she had really poor English ... it was a really broken English conversation, but I had verified it was a person,” he said.
The tribunal heard that the worker left the job shortly after receiving her back pay, an “onboarding ticket” — the company’s system for registering new staff having been submitted from the service station to the payroll department on January 25th, 2022.
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Mr Ennis conducted an investigation into the matter on foot of the audit and put various allegations to Mr Price, including failing to correctly conduct the “onboarding” of the worker, failing to keep statutory working time records and “budget misappropriations” for 2021 and 2022 leading to financial gain.
Mr Price was ultimately dismissed on the grounds of gross misconduct following a disciplinary hearing, a decision upheld on internal appeal, the tribunal was told.
In a legal submission, Mr O’Flaherty said the failure to “on-board” the worker for 16 weeks meant she was unable to clock in and out and have her breaks recorded.
“The other consequence from this employee not being onboarded and not being paid is that Mr Price, in addition to his salary of €48,000 per year, was entitled to a profit share scheme — a percentage of profit made compared to budget,” said Mr O’Flaherty. “The result was he made an increased profit share of €2,000,” counsel added.
Mr O’Flaherty submitted further that Mr Price had been “very combative” and “wouldn’t answer straight questions” when the company was conducting its investigation and disciplinary process. The company concluded that he had committed gross misconduct following a fair and legally compliant process, he added.
Mr Price’s barrister Rory Treanor said there had been “explicit instructions” from head office not to go through the onboarding process without submitting a PPS number and bank details.
He said that the worker, a Polish national with little English, found herself “trying to deal with the bureaucracy of Ireland” at a time when there were “widely-reported delays in the issuing of PPS numbers” in the months following the cyberattack on the Health Service Executive in 2021.
Mr Treanor said his client made “best efforts and multiple attempts” to assist the worker, along with two other members of management at the Ashbourne service centre but that the employer “targeted” Mr Price for disciplinary action.
He rejected any suggestion that there was “subterfuge” on the part of his client to “squirrel away” what amounted to €1,000 in take-home pay.
“We say the reason is that Mr Ennis had made up his mind, and the ham-fisted approach taken by Mr Ennis in pursuing this investigation is absolutely evident from the chaotic way [it] proceeded,” he said.
Counsel said new accusations were thrown at his client during the investigation in a deliberate attempt to “provoke” him and create a “hostile atmosphere” and that a “cursory” conclusion was reached.
“When you put it all together, what you have is Mr Ennis going off on one about a situation where everyone was just trying to do their best in a very very difficult situation, singling out Mr Price for dismissal,” said Mr Treanor.
He added that the disciplinary process and appeal hearing “barely merit mention as part of a fair procedure”.
The matter was adjourned to a future date by adjudicating officer Brian Dalton. Mr Ennis is to continue giving evidence on the next occasion and be cross-examined on his testimony, while Mr Price is expected to give his evidence at a later stage in the proceedings.
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