A construction firm which put a junior safety officer on a performance improvement plan (PIP) while she was pregnant – only to “abandon” it after just seven weeks and let her go – has been ordered to pay her over €10,000 for discrimination.
Claudia O’Connor secured the award against Bretland Construction Ltd on foot of a complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998 challenging the termination of her probationary employment on November 14th 2023.
Ms O’Connor had joined the firm in May 2023 as a junior health and safety officer, earning €673 a week for 45 hours’ work.
Ms O’Connor’s evidence to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) was that she performed “all core elements of her role” without any issues being raised until August that year and believed she was “progressing well”.
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A new head of health and safety was appointed at the firm that month, and on August 11th, Ms O’Connor told him she was pregnant, she said. It was the man’s first week on the job, she said.
She said that after this her new department head’s attitude towards her “changed” and he made her feel “unwanted in the company”. Her evidence was that the department head pulled her up on “grammatical mistakes” in her emails and would not let her send any without reviewing them.
She acknowledged there was “some truth” to observations made about her performance in an appraisal in September, but submitted that it was “overly critical” and that she was put “under pressure”.
The health and safety chief, whose name was left out of a decision on the case published on Friday, said he had hoped Ms O’Connor would succeed in the job.
“She was safety-trained, but lacking in knowledge,” the witness told the tribunal.
He described showing Ms O’Connor “ten times in a row” in one day how to carry out a risk assessment method statement, or Rams, to identify construction site hazards.
He said Ms O’Connor “wasn’t even prepared to try” to complete the assessment statement and proceeded to tell him she “couldn’t be doing those Rams”.
“She was unable to structure an email with a beginning, middle or end. Her standard of written correspondence, [with] atrocious spelling, landing in a client’s inbox, was very problematic,” the witness added.
He ultimately took the view that it would have taken Ms O’Connor “years to reach the required standard” for a permanent job.
In her decision, adjudicator Máire Mulcahy said the respondent’s position that Ms O’Connor had “difficulty with performing the essential elements of the job” was “credible”.
The complainant did not contest that her knowledge and abilities were “below what was legitimately expected” and that she showed “little or no initiative” when it came to developing them. Nor did she contest the respondent’s assertions that she had issues with time management and drafting emails, Ms Mulcahy wrote.
However, Ms Mulcahy called it “inescapable and problematic” for the firm that there was no evidence of Ms O’Connor being made aware of any performance issues before she reported her pregnancy to her employer.
The company had committed to a “performance improvement plan” aimed at giving Ms O’Connor “a chance at rescuing her position” only to abandon it and let her go within seven weeks, without stating the reason in writing, Ms Mulcahy added.
Ms Mulcahy concluded that Ms O’Connor’s dismissal “was not wholly unconnected with her pregnancy” and “tainted with discrimination” – and awarded her €10,415 in compensation.
The adjudicator made further awards totalling €873 for breaches of the Terms of Employment Information Act 1994 which were admitted by the employer, along with €201 under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 in respect of unpaid annual leave.
Peter Dunlea of Peninsula Business Services appeared for the respondent, while representatives of the Leinster Citizens Information Service acted for the complainant in the case.
