A FORMER regional manager with Campbell Catering was awarded almost £50,000 by a Circuit Court judge who found he was unfairly dismissed from his job.
Mr Alan McGuigan told Cork Circuit Court he was headhunted by the Campbell Bewley group, sold his Dublin home and moved to Cork at the insistence of the company just months before he was told his job was redundant. Days after he cashed his final pay cheque, the company announced the appointment of another person to his job.
Managing director of Campbell Catering, Mr Gerry Fagan said the parent company, Campbell Bewley made a loss of £679,000 in 1994, when it expected to have a profit of £2.2 million. It lost a schools' meals' contract, the Eurotunnel catering venture did not go ahead, coffee prices increased, a venture in Egypt failed and an institutional investor took an 18 per cent share in the company.
The Campbell Catering division made a reduced profit of almost £500,000 in 1994 and in a document "Winds of Change" the company told its management that costs would have to be trimmed. After weeks of analysis it decided to make several redundancies including the operations manager while the managing director retired.
Mr McGuigan, who he acknowledged had been an excellent employee, was the last person recruited and since Cork was overmanaged he was selected for redundancy.
While Mr McGuigan had agreed to stay with the company for three, years, there was no similar commitment by the company to him. "It would be totally against the company's policy and very difficult to give a commitment when you have more than 2,000 employees, especially in the contract catering industry", he said.
He did not know that Mr McGuigan had been assured his job was safe in February 1994 when he was buying a new house in Cork because the person giving him the assurance, Ms Nuala Dillon, did not know about the company's redundancies plans as she was also to lose her job.
He agreed to give Mr McGuigan a month's salary instead of the statutory week's money when he learned that he had moved house in these circumstances.
Mr Fagan said he took over direct control for the company's largest contracts in Cork, in UCC and the Airport, and the Airport catering manager, Mr Stephen O'Connor was given responsibility for the smaller industrial contracts in Cork. A few months later he took over the Waterford contracts too making a total of 20.
He moved into Mr McGuigan's office and got his company car and mobile telephone. Mr Fagan denied he had in effect taken over Mr Mc Guigan's job.
Mr McGuigan, a former manager of the Metropole Hotel in Cork, in evidence said he was shocked to learn of his redundancy. He would not have sold his Dublin house and moved his family to Cork had he not believed his job was secure. He got a letter from group managing director, Mr Patrick Campbell just four months earlier complimenting him on doing a good job.
He has been unable, to get a full time job since being dismissed at the end of August 1994 and has been working as a consultant. Most of the work has been abroad in Russia and Bulgaria but he had to return from a contract in Sierra Leone in west Africa because of their civil war.
Judge Patrick Moran said with Mr McGuigan's expressed commitment to Campbell Catering for three years there had to be a similar implied commitment by the company. This was an issue of equity and fairness. "We are not living in a state of total dictatorship", he said. He awarded him costs and £49,483 made up of £40,000 for loss of income, £10,000 for loss of his company car and £12,000 for the cost of moving house, less £12,517 paid to him by Campbell Catering and his consultancy earnings since his dismissal.