An admin worker at the Brazilian embassy has secured €13,500 in compensation at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) for being blocked from carrying over annual leave after she complained about not getting a top-up while on maternity leave last year.
In a series of pay, working hours and equality complaints brought by the worker, Nicole Marques-Montano, the WRC , was told the parties first fell into dispute over the refusal of a €1,279-a-month top-up while out on maternity leave.
Having told Ms Marques-Montano she could carry forward 14 days of accrued annual leave instead of taking it when requested in July 2021, the tribunal found the embassy “did an about-turn” and withdrew permission to carry forward the untaken leave.
In a workplace grievance to Brazil’s deputy head of mission to Ireland over the maternity leave top-up, Ms Marques-Montano wrote: “I feel discriminated against for being a woman.”
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Making reference to a “sexist environment”, she wrote that she would pursue the matter legally “in either Brazil or in Ireland”.
The complainant said a male colleague had been paid a top-up on the same terms while out on sick leave in 2019 even though it was not provided for in either of their contracts.
Her solicitor, Stefan O’Connor of Mannion Solicitors, said his client had suffered a financial loss of €7,674.42 because of the non-payment of the top-up.
The Federative Republic of Brazil, represented by solicitor Gerald Kean in the matter, denied Ms Marques-Montano’s complaint of victimisation in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998 and said in response to her Payment of Wages Act 1991 complaint on the maternity leave top-up that the Brazilian foreign ministry had not sanctioned the funds.
On Ms Marques-Montano’s Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 complaint on the accrued annual leave, Mr Kean said the leave could only be carried over where there had been certified sick leave and that the embassy was in compliance with the legislation.
In her decision on the case, WRC adjudicator Maire Mulcahy wrote that the “uncontested” evidence of Ms Marques-Montano was that the embassy “held out the promise” of carrying the 14 days over before it “retrospectively withdrew it without any prior notification” – and said precedent required an employer to give advance notice.
The adjudicator ordered the embassy to restore the 14 days’ leave to the complainant “with immediate effect”.
Ms Mulcahy also found the December complaint letter “prompted, hot on its heels, the retraction of a commitment” to allow the complainant carry over the leave, amounting to a detriment.
Ms Mulcahy ordered the respondent to pay €13,554 for to Ms Marques-Montano for “the distress caused to her and the effects of the victimisation”.
