WRC finds foundry used Covid to get rid of longest-serving worker

A leading bronze foundry used Covid as an opportunity to get rid their oldest and longest-serving employee from the workplace and must now pay her over €25,000 in compensation, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has found.

“It seems to me that this is a classic situation where a long-standing employee has been earmarked as being overly expensive, deadweight,” the WRC adjudicator wrote in a decision published on Wednesday.

It would have been “commercially obvious” to make her redundant or invite her to take early retirement – but instead the foundry had chosen to “alienate, ostracise and belittle” her, adjudicating officer Penelope McGrath wrote.

The WRC upheld complaints against Crucible Arts Services and Technology Cast Ltd under the Employment Equality Act, Payment of Wages Act, Organisation of Working Time Act and the Terms of Employment (Information) Act taken by its former employee Kathryn Hartnett.

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The Dublin 8 workshop, which denied the claims, has produced well-known bronzes including the statues of James Connolly and Phil Lynott, and the Lady Justice plaque at the Criminal Courts of Justice building in Dublin.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Ms Hartnett, who had some 25 years’ service, was told the foundry would close as a non-essential business, the WRC heard.

She said she was prepared to carry out her administrative and bookkeeping duties from home but heard nothing from her place of work before a third party said there was activity back at the foundry.

Then she found out duties of hers had been completed by someone else and that she had been locked out of the company’s bank account, she said.

Ms Hartnett said the firm’s director, identified only as Mr CB jnr in the decision, was “evasive” with her when she phoned him but “eventually conceded” that either he or the company’s accountancy firm were doing “the lion’s share of her duties”.

She wrote to the firm on 23rd October, 2020 saying she was aggrieved and asking for an explanation and whether it was intended to make her redundant, the WRC heard.

Ms Hartnett told the WRC she believed she was left out of the return to work “in the hope that she will give up and go away” and that she was still on lay-off on the hearing day.

The company, which was represented at the hearing by John Madden BL maintained that the foundry went into “complete shutdown”.

Mr CB jnr gave evidence that the company was in “survival mode” and that that it had “always been his intention to bring the complainant back into the workplace when the outlook improved”.

Ms Hartnett’s barrister, Mary Fay BL, took issue with a passage from the company’s submission which stated that the complainant was employed on “exceptional terms for an extended period” with an hourly wage of €26 and a “disproportionately large pension”.

“Even the directors do not obtain such a large benefit from the company,” the submission added.

Adjudicating officer Penelope McGrath wrote that the “content and tone” of that passage was “about as blunt an admission of the underlying thinking as is needed”.

“It is quite clear that the complainant’s contention that she is considered too expensive is correct,” Ms McGrath added.

Mr CB jnr had “availed of the random opportunity presented by Covid to get the complainant out of the workplace and keep her out”, she added.

Ms McGrath upheld Ms Hartnett’s discrimination complaint, awarding her €17,500 in compensation, and further redress of €4,000 for unpaid wages; €3,600 for public holiday pay and €650 as compensation for the failure to provide written terms of employment.

The total of the awards was €25,350.