A bookkeeper who was forced to quit over “intolerable” bullying by a senior colleague at an engineering firm — along with unlawful deductions from her pay — has secured orders totalling more than €40,000 against her former employer.
In a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, against her former employer, HPL Engineering Services Ltd, Theresa McGuinness said a new accountant who joined the firm in June 2022 and became her supervisor made her life such a “misery” that she had to quit.
Ms McGuinness said in evidence to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) that a colleague informed her of a conversation with the accountant on 13th June, 2022 — identified only as Mr A in the WRC decision — in which Mr A said Ms McGuinness was “no longer needed in the company”.
Mr A told her at a meeting the following day he was “coming to work full-time” at the firm and “bringing his own team” — including his wife as a human resources (HR) manager and “someone he had trained in accounts”, Ms McGuinness said.
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The accountant then said that meant there was “no work” for her and her salary was going to be cut from €40,000 to the “going rate” of €30,000, with further cuts to her hours, the complainant said.
Ms McGuinness said the accountant’s words to her were: “Take it or leave it.”
She said the company’s director, Peter Lambe, later assured her that her salary would not be cut and that there “would always be work for her”.
However, Ms McGuinness said there was “tension” in the office, and set out incidents where Mr A had been “deeply unpleasant” or “nasty” over the following months.
This included Mr A telling Ms McGuinness on July 21st, 2022, she had “no business” issuing an invoice at the direction of Mr Lambe — before later that day raising an issue with her on the basis of wrong information, telling her he “did not like her attitude”, Ms McGuinness said.
Her access to work systems was then cut off by Mr A, she said.
Ms McGuinness said Mr A accused her of “withholding information” four days later and got so angry that he “stormed out of the office, slamming doors behind him and then kicking the door in the joint office”.
A month after that Mr A informed Ms McGuinness and another colleague their hours were being reduced by half to 2½ days a week, the tribunal was told.
Five days on from that, on August 25th, Mr A took away her office chair and replaced it with one she said was “unsuitable”, then took her computer monitor and active files from her desk.
“The tension in the office was palpable,” Ms McGuinness said, calling it “totally unbearable”.
Her representative, HR consultant Ken Stafford, said that his client was left “exhausted and very stressed” by the situation and was signed off on medical leave by her doctor from September 23rd, 2022.
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She wrote to Mr Lambe on 31st October setting out the treatment but received no reply, and resigned her employment on 25th November, Mr Stafford said.
Mr Lambe said the company had “grown too fast” and that he believed, in hindsight, that the office environment was “toxic”.
He said he had not witnessed any of Mr A’s alleged behaviour and denied failing to pay the full salary.
The “ongoing hostility” of Mr A and the pay and working hours cuts amounted to his client’s supervisor “utterly repudiating the employment contract”, Mr Stafford submitted.
“Both Mr Lambe and Mr A were aware of the complainant’s dismay at the actions of the company, but both chose to ignore her concerns,” Mr Stafford added.
“[The] only credible conclusion that the complainant could reach was that the respondent wanted her out of the job, and they were quite prepared to engage in grossly unpleasant tactics to achieve their aim,” Mr Stafford added.
“When she had nowhere and no one else in the company to turn to, she resigned,” Mr Stafford added.
In his decision on the case, WRC adjudicator Thomas O’Driscoll wrote that the “intolerable” behaviour of the accountant, Mr A and the failure to pay Ms McGuinness “a substantial part [of] her full wages” amounted to breaches of “fundamental” terms of the employment contract.
“I am satisfied that the constant abuse and negative tones constituted bullying; Mr A did not appear as a witness to testify otherwise, but Mr Lambe acknowledged that in hindsight the situation was toxic in the office,” Mr O’Driscoll wrote.
Mr O’Driscoll found it reasonable that Ms McGuinness considered her contract to have been repudiated by her employer and ruled she had been unfairly dismissed by way of constructive dismissal.
He also wrote that he was fully satisfied with the complainant’s “earnest efforts” to secure alternative employment, noting her evidence of “numerous companies and interviews she attended” before securing a job in the public sector in June this year.
He awarded €39,000 in compensation for the unfair dismissal, which was close to the entire losses suffered by the complainant since leaving the firm.
Mr O’Driscoll found the company had failed to rebut the “credible oral evidence” of the complainant by producing documentary proof that the series of pay deductions were “made good to her” — and made a further order under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 for €1,031, the net value of the unpaid wages over four weeks.
He also found the company in breach of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act, 1994 by its failure to provide her with a written statement of core employment terms and ordered a further €770 in compensation.
The sum of the orders against HPL Engineering Services Ltd in the case was €40,108.
