A former scrapyard worker has said a senior manager used a “diplomatic way of verbally abusing people” by telling her that other staff had referred to her using a “hateful and obscene” word in front a group of colleagues and customers.
“He called me a c***,” the former worker told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) – adding that she believed that five of her colleagues and three customers who were present when the remarks were directed at her “enjoyed hearing this, because they all laughed loudly”.
The witness, Ms A, said she decided to quit her job as a compliance professional with the firm because even if the manager was gone, she “couldn’t work with the rest of them”.
She was giving evidence on Tuesday in a case brought under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against the Hammond Lane Metal Company Ltd by Bernard McMahon, who was dismissed from his job as the manager of its scrapyard in Clondalkin, Dublin 22 in the wake of the witness’s complaint.
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The press was directed not to identify Ms A in connection with the case on foot of an application for anonymity by the company’s lawyers, which was not opposed by the complainant side.
Giving evidence, Ms A explained that she was a military veteran in another EU state before moving to Ireland more than a decade ago and had extensive experience in the security industry before joining Hammond Lane.
The scrap metal company, which has between 75 and 80 staff in the Republic, has sites in Cork, Sligo and Athlone, as well as two Dublin facilities in Clondalkin and Ringsend.
Ms A said she was at work at the Clondalkin site when Mr McMahon made the remarks to her between 10.50am and 11am on December 12th last year when she entered its weighbridge office, where the complainant was present with five of her colleagues and three customers.
Quoting from a written complaint she made to the company the following day, Ms A said Mr McMahon asked her: “Do you know how they called you when you started here?” and that she answered: “No.”
“He continued: ‘You was called a c***.’ Then I have to admit I did not know the meaning of this word as I did not have it in my vocabulary. I said: ‘I don’t know the meaning of the word. I am going to Google it,’” Ms A said.
“Mr McMahon decided to spell it for me: ‘C-*-*-*’. I think you can actually see him on CCTV actually spelling it,” Ms A added.
The company’s barrister, Katherine McVeigh BL, instructed by Eversheds Sutherland, added that Ms A complained to her employer that the remarks were “extremely offensive and demeaning” and called the C-word a “hateful, obscene and harmful” thing to say to a woman.
“If you call somebody a c*** any person will tell you, you don’t spell it, for God’s sake. It’s like you are putting a knife in and you are swishing it around to make it more painful,” Ms A said in her evidence.
Cross-examining Ms A, the complainant’s representative, human resources consultant Ken Stafford said his client “didn’t say the word; he spelt the word”.
“No, he said it, and then he spelt it,” Ms A said.
“He decided to be the person who brought me the message. He called me ‘c***’,” Ms A said. “He wanted to make sure I am getting that [message]. It’s the diplomatic way of him verbally abusing people,” she added. When Mr Stafford put it to her that this was an “assumption”, Ms A said: “I saw Bernard each and every day for one year. I know how he works.”
Ms A told Mr Stafford that “nobody” helped her prepare her written complaint to the company. The witness said she stayed until 1am after the incident, consulting Google and a dictionary, to prepare her statement.
Cross-examining the company’s HR manager Ken Ewing today, Mr Stafford put it to him that Ms A’s statement did not literally state: “Bernard called me a c***.”
“I don’t see that, no,” he said.
The witness said he called Mr McMahon to an “informal, peer-to-peer meeting” on December 19th, 2023 and asked him about the Ms A’s allegation.
“He admitted “referring to [Ms A] as a ‘C-*-*-*’,” Mr Ewing said, spelling out the word letter by letter. “It flabbergasted me that a senior manager in the business would take the time to refer to a junior female migrant worker, relatively new in the business – that he took the time to refer to her as a ‘C-*-*-*’,” he said.
Mr Stafford put it to him that his client would give evidence that he was “frogmarched” off the premises. Mr Ewing denied that.
“[His] tone, attitude and aggression that day – I had to suspend him. I suspended Bernard for his own benefit, because he became nasty and aggressive in tone and attitude,” he said.
Mr Stafford put it to him that as he had questioned Mr McMahon in connection with the allegations, the meeting was “an investigation”.
“Yeah, fair enough,” Mr Ewing said. Mr Stafford remarked that it was the “first step” in the official company disciplinary process. Mr Ewing accepted Mr McMahon had not been represented or provided with a copy of the complaint at that stage.
The case before adjudicator David James Murphy is set to run for the rest of the week, with six more company witnesses yet to give evidence before Mr McMahon testifies.
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