An electrician who said he walked off the site of the national children’s hospital after his €33-an-hour pay was cut by €7 and his supervisor remarked that he could be replaced by an apprentice has won €5,750 for constructive dismissal.
The worker, Ian Church, told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) that he had been trying to have the pay cut issue fixed for several weeks at that point, and went as far as telling his employer: “I’m not working for this money.”
He secured the award against HPL Engineering Services Ltd on foot of a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, in a decision just published by the tribunal.
Mr Church’s evidence was that when his mother-in-law passed away in March 2023, he told a supervisor that he would be taking a week’s leave.
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However, he said that on his return, the HPL site supervisor adopted an “aggressive manner” and “had a go at me for not letting him know I took a week off”.
Later that week, Mr Church said, he received a payslip and discovered that his hourly rate of pay had been reduced by €7 – about 20 per cent of his €33-an-hour salary, his barrister said.
Mr Church’s barrister, Aisling Finnegan BL, appearing instructed by solicitor Peter Collins, submitted that the contract “very clearly had €33.03” set out as an hourly rate of pay and put it to her client that he had communicated “just how fundamental the rate of pay was” to one employee.
Referring to text messages he sent to an employee in HPL’s payroll, Mr Church told the tribunal: “I said €33 was my rate I agreed with [his boss Peter Lambe]. I don’t know where €25.72 came from; I won’t be working for that rate.”
After that, Mr Church said in evidence, he messaged Mr Lambe, telling his employer: “Hi, me wages are wrong again ... If the rate of pay is the same again next week, I’ll be handing in my notice.”
“I asked Peter to give us a ring. His reply was: ‘I’m on holidays',” Mr Church said. He said his response, after apologising for intruding on his boss’s leave, was: “I’m out of here, I’m not working for this money.”
The reduced pay rate appeared again in a payslip Mr Church was handed on site on March 31st, 2023, he said.
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“I approached [the HPL site supervisor] again and he didn’t entertain me at all, so I told [a supervisor]: ‘I’m not working for this rate; it’s not my agreed rate',” Mr Church said.
He further alleged the HPL site supervisor tried to “sabotage” him in the position by telling him he could replace him with an apprentice electrician to “do the work quicker than I was doing”.
“Did you work for HPL after March 31st, 2023?” Ms Finnegan asked.
“No, I walked out after that day,” he said.
Cross-examined by the respondent’s representative, Andrea Montanelli of human resources consultancy Peninsula, Mr Church accepted he had not sent a formal letter of resignation.
Ms Montanelli put it to the complainant that he had a discussion with Mr Lambe about going to work on a job in Malmo, Sweden early in May 2023 and had spoken by phone with an employee about travel arrangements.
“You were never aggressive with her over the phone?” she asked Mr Church. Ms Finnegan objected to the line of questioning.
“The last time I talked to [the worker] was the day she demanded my passport details there and then, which I physically couldn’t do. We’d a heated argument over pay,” Mr Church said. He added that it had been a “hard week” in the wake of the death of his mother-in-law.
In her decision, adjudicator Gaye Cunningham noted that it took “a number of weeks” for HPL to address the pay issue.
While Mr Church had not lodged a formal grievance on the pay issue, he had made “numerous enquiries” and suffered “some understandable frustration about difficulty in getting answers”, she wrote.
She wrote that Mr Church “made very clear his dissatisfaction” and that he wanted it fixed urgently.
“In that circumstance, I find the lack of formal invocation of internal procedures was not fatal to [Mr Church’s] case,” the adjudicator wrote.
However, she wrote that Mr Church “contributed somewhat to his situation” because of his “lack of co-operation” on the travel documents required to send him to the site in Sweden.
She awarded him €5,750 in compensation under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, and rejected further claims in relation to wages, working time and terms of employment.
