Business

Stormy WRC meeting sees worker and former bosses trade ‘mutual insults [and] foul and abusive language’

Crane hire firm that sacked employee with broken pelvis ordered to pay €14,000

A crane hire company that dismissed a worker while he was at home recovering from a broken pelvis has been ordered to pay him €14,000, after what the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) found was an “egregious” breach of employment legislation that was “quite simply beyond belief in this day and age”. Photograph: Alan Betson / The Irish Times

Stephen Bourke
Tue Feb 13 2024 - 13:40

A crane hire company that dismissed a worker while he was at home recovering from a broken pelvis has been ordered to pay him €14,000, after what the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) found was an “egregious” breach of employment legislation that was “quite simply beyond belief in t, his day and age”.

It follows a stormy WRC hearing days before the Christmas break last year, during which the worker and his former bosses “traded mutual insults [and] foul and abusive language”, an adjudicator noted.

A witness stated at one point: “We do cranes, not babies.”

Enda Fox had accused his former employer, Gabriel O’Brien Crane Hire Ltd, of disability discrimination in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998 by terminating his employment while he was recovering from a pelvic fracture after a workplace accident two years ago.

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Mr Fox told the Workplace Relations Commission that he and a small crew were working on the construction of a wind farm in the midlands on 30th June, 2022 when he fell 10 to 12 feet to the ground from the back of a crane.

He said his line manager Conor O’Brien “lost the head” with him when he phoned to report the accident and swore at him.

Mr Fox explained that he was “declared okay” after the accident at Tullamore Hospital and went back to the site – only to find he could not stand up when he tried to get out of his colleague’s car, he said. He said he then spent a fortnight “bed bound” in hospital and another seven or eight weeks “confined to a wheelchair”.

The complainant’s solicitor, Richard Stapleton, said in a legal submission that Mr Fox had required “extensive medical treatment” and had sent in sick notes throughout his absence.

However, when Mr Fox asked his employer to complete a form so that he could claim sick pay from the Construction Workers’ Sick Pay Trust, the form was returned with the company stating Mr Fox’s employment had been terminated on 1st August that year, it was submitted.

Mr Stapleton argued his client was discriminated against on disability grounds in the employer’s failure to provide reasonable accommodation and in the dismissal.

Father and son Gabriel and Conor O’Brien, who attended on behalf of the company, told adjudicator Eileen Campbell at a hearing in December 2023 that they were denying all claims and “saving the legal representation for the next round”.

In evidence, Conor O’Brien said Mr Fox had not filled out an incident report form about the fall – adding that that the worker would not take his calls and told him to “f*** off and not phone” following the accident.

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Mr O’Brien also stated that after making several attempts to contact Mr Fox he “lost interest, to be honest”, and although the firm did receive sick notes, one of them was not signed, which he called “a farce”, according to the adjudicator’s summary of his evidence.

“C’est la vie, off you go, and if he had answered his f***ing phone to me he would still have a job,” Mr O’Brien also remarked, the adjudicator wrote.

When Mr Stapleton put it to Mr O’Brien that the employer made “no contact whatsoever” with his client, Mr O’Brien replied: “We do not babysit. We do cranes, not babies,” the adjudicator recorded.

The adjudicator, Ms Campbell, noted in her summary of Mr O’Brien’s evidence that the firm’s defence to the discrimination claim seemed to be: “If the complainant is disabled then they did not know this when they hired him.”

She wrote that when the time came for the management side to challenge Mr Fox on his evidence: “There was little by way of cross-examination ... apart from a trading of mutual insults across the table, accompanied by foul and abusive language and accusations that the complainant was to blame for the workplace accident.”

She called a halt “in the interests of the orderly conduct of the hearing”, she wrote.

In her decision on the case, published on Tuesday, Ms Campbell wrote the management side “had to be reminded more than once ... that nothing turned on whose fault [the accident] was” in respect of Mr Fox’s discrimination claim.

The medical certs referring to the pelvic fracture sent to the firm meant it was clear the company was “aware of and on full notice of the complainant’s disability at all material times”, she wrote.

She accepted the company’s position that Mr Fox “did not respond to the phone calls and refused to engage” with Conor O’Brien, but that this had to be considered against the conduct of Mr O’Brien when the men spoke by phone on the day of the accident.

Not only did the company fail to provide any reasonable accommodation, Mr Fox was also “subject to a discriminatory dismissal on the grounds of disability” which she termed “egregious and completely lacking in fair procedures, she wrote.

“The procedural void, together with the lack of compliance with employment legislation and with employer obligations in the instant case, is quite simply beyond belief in this day and age,” Ms Campbell added.

She awarded Mr Fox €10,000 in compensation for the discrimination and, noting Mr O’Brien’s admission that there was no contract of employment, a further €4,000 – the maximum award of four weeks’ pay for a breach of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994.

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