A slaughterhouse safety manager, who said a “toxic” workplace environment where she was called a “prostitute” and a “doll” facilitated alleged “bully-boy behaviour” towards her by a State employee, has won €48,000 in compensation after she was penalised for making a complaint.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) heard the claimant had started work with the company, a cross-Border slaughterhouse and meatpacking business, in the spring of 2018 as a technical manager overseeing health and safety in its Republic of Ireland operations.
The claimant cited an incident at the firm’s work Christmas party in 2021, when she said a male colleague became threatening, called her a “prostitute” and made “sexual gestures” toward her – all while filming it on his phone. She said she was frightened of the man, and complained, but that she never found out if he was sanctioned before he later left the workplace.
On another occasion, she said her boss told an investor visiting the plant: “Wait ‘til you see this doll.” She said it was one of a number of incidents which made her feel “objectified” and that the response of her bosses was that she was “overreacting” and “making unnecessary trouble”.
Her representation, the North Connacht and Ulster Citizens Information Service, stated in a submission to the WRC: “The managerial approach was to downplay safety breaches ... and this allowed a practice to develop where women were treated disrespectfully.”
The tribunal heard that the claimant was subject to a formal investigation in the wake of a series of “altercations” with a State employee in the summer of 2023. The man, identified only as “XY” in the decision, was part of a team assigned to the workplace on days that livestock were being slaughtered as an employee of an unidentified government department.
The claimant explained that she had made arrangements to retain the key for the ladies’ bathroom at the slaughterhouse because it was being dirtied by male workers, an arrangement “welcomed and agreed upon by all the female vets and the female staff”, she said. However, she said Mr XY had insisted keeping the key in his office – and told her when she complained: “I work for the [government department] and I can do what I want.”
Mr XY had accused the claimant of being “aggressive” when she closed a window to his office on 3 July that year. The claimant’s position was that it would have allowed insects get from the outside to the production floor of the meat plant – and that the matter was “downplayed” by her bosses.
In another incident on 14th July, upon asking Mr XY to enter the plant via reception instead of through an office stair, he “responded by raising his hand and telling me repeatedly to ‘f*** off’,” the claimant said in a statement. She said Mr XY – who was not party to the hearing – admitted saying this.
Her position was that Mr XY had “repeatedly used aggressive language” towards her and was “extremely demeaning” – and that if a “toxic” environment had not been the norm in the workplace, Mr XY “would not have responded so aggressively to normal queries about health and safety issues”.
“No one from management ever said: ‘Do as she says, this is a health and safety measure and she is the health and safety manager,‘” the claimant said in her evidence. She said she had been subjected to “bully-boy behaviour” from Mr XY.
However, she said that relations with the government department were “important” to her employer because it had the power to decide whether the abattoir could operate or not.
The only witness to give evidence on behalf of the respondent firm was an employee of a Northern Ireland-based human resources (HR) consultancy, who had carried out an internal investigation after the exchange of grievances.
Under cross-examination, the HR consultant accepted that the risk of insects getting in through an open window, and the issue of men using the women’s bathrooms, could be health and safety matters.
She also accepted that Mr XY “admitted swearing at the complainant” and that her report made no recommendation that the employer engage with the government department to make sure it did not happen again.
The HR consultant also denied she was “biased” in carrying out her investigation.
However, in her decision, adjudicator Emile Daly concluded that the investigation process was biased, and had led to a “fundamentally unfair” recommendation that the claimant be disciplined.
It was “a reprimand which constituted an act of penalisation which would not have occurred but for her raising the complaint,” Ms Daly wrote.
Further penalisation occurred when the firm pressured the claimant to attend formal meetings while off on sick leave, Ms Daly found. This was “done for a purpose, which was to coerce her and to intimidate her into leaving her job”, the adjudicator added.
Emails between the firm’s management and its HR advisers were “evidence of an intentional strategy to end her employment”, she wrote – adding that an exit package tabled in February 2024 was “done to pressurise her” in a further act of penalisation.
Ms Daly wrote that the company’s management knew about the background issues and the “ugly sexist interaction” faced by the employee in 2021 – and that her view was that the employer could have adopted “an entirely different approach”.
Ruling the firm in breach of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, Ms Daly directed it to pay the claimant just over a year’s salary in compensation for the effects of penalisation – a sum of €48,000.
