A worker at hurling helmet company Mycro has won over €28,000 for penalisation and disability discrimination after his complaints about operating cutting equipment used for making face guards led to him being laid off without pay.
The Workplace Relations Commission has ordered Mycro Sportsgear Ltd to pay Trevor O’Mahony one year’s salary in compensation for penalisation under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 and a further six months’ pay in compensation for disability discrimination for a failure to provide reasonable accommodation at work.
The tribunal found it had been an act of penalisation to place Mr O’Mahony on lay-off without pay in January 2022, but rejected his claim that the company had sacked him.
Mr O’Mahony, a 25-year veteran of the company, said in evidence that he had raised the difficulties he was having with a cutting machine in July and September 2021, telling his boss by text on October 12th, 2021 that his doctor had advised him not to do work that “repeatedly strains my back”.
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He said he went back to work doing alternative work the same month and went to physiotherapy in November that year, paid for by the firm.
However, the following January, Mr O’Mahony said the company’s general manager, Ronan Curran, told him that he would have to go home unless he could work on producing face guards.
When Mr O’Mahony sought a letter confirming dismissal for an illness benefit application, the company told him the lay-off was a “temporary” measure and that the job was there for him “whenever you decide to come back”.
“You know you haven’t been sacked,” the email continued.
Mr Curran, the general manager, said he never told Mr O’Mahony he had been dismissed.
An assistant manager, Thomas Murray, said the cutting equipment had been in use at the company for the last 20 years and “generally worked fine” and that he had been unable to source a replacement because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A replacement was finally sourced in December 2021.
WRC adjudicator Úna Glazier-Farmer found Mycro had discriminated against Mr O’Mahony by failing to give reasonable accommodation, but rejected a further claim of victimisation and found that no discriminatory dismissal had taken place.
She also found the lay-off amounted to whistleblower penalisation in breach of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act.
Ms Glazier-Farmer awarded €9,427.60 – six months’ pay – for the disability discrimination in breach of the Employment Equality Act, along with €18,855.20 – a year’s pay – for the health and safety penalisation.
A further award of €414.40 for a breach of the Organisation of Working Time Act over non-payment for two public holidays brought the total orders against Mycro Sportsgear Ltd to €28,697.20.
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