An order of nuns has been directed to pay a former employee more than €70,000 over the “callous nature” of the woman’s dismissal.
A Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator described Geraldine Baxter’s case as “one of the most egregious examples of mistreatment” he had ever encountered. He found she had made “no contribution” at all to her sacking in 2023.
Ms Baxter took the case against the Little Sisters of the Poor, who she started working for in 2006, and won the maximum two years’ pay in redress under the Unfair Dismissals Act along with eight weeks’ notice pay.
At a hearing last October, Ms Baxter’s barrister, Tiernan Lowey, instructed by Áine Curran of O’Mara Geraghty McCourt, said a new director of nursing joined the organisation in January 2022 and sought to change the rules in relation to various types of leave and rostering.
He said these changes also addressed work-from-home arrangements, stating that prior agreements would be in place “until further notice”.
Mr Lowey said his client had “always” done some of her paperwork from home under an agreement made orally and established as custom and practice. He said Ms Baxter understood the email to mean the existing arrangement would continue.
He said Ms Baxter reduced her hours from a five- to a four-day week around 2016, but kept the 20 days’ annual leave a full-time worker would be entitled to.
However, the order’s national human resources manager called Ms Baxter to a meeting in May 2022, having presented her with allegations of falsified timekeeping and annual leave records.
At the meeting, Mr Lowey said his client “strongly rejected the allegations put to her” and expressed concern that the respondent “was trying to remove her from her role and replace her with a younger member of staff on a lower salary”.
A letter of suspension and a disciplinary hearing followed in June 2022, the tribunal heard.
Two more allegations against Ms Baxter appeared at this point: an alleged “failure to follow correct procedures when requesting overtime” and a “general allegation of ‘breach of trust’.”
The HR manager who carried out the initial investigation conceded under cross-examination that the allegation of falsifying timekeeping records was “incorrect”, the tribunal noted.
On the allegation that Ms Baxter had falsified her holiday entitlements, the HR manager said a nun, referred to as Sister A, had told her she “did not recall” allowing Ms Baxter to retain 20 days’ leave after reducing her hours.
The HR manager accepted that Sister A’s memory was “declining” when they met ahead of the initial disciplinary meeting.
Mr Lowey said his client then became unwell due to work-related stress and filed a formal grievance in August 2022, alleging bullying and harassment by her employer. It called for the disciplinary process to be abandoned.
Roberta Urbon, of HR consultancy Peninsula Business Services, for the employer, said the disciplinary process was “paused” pending the outcome of the grievance investigation.
This was conducted by Graphite HRM Ltd and rejected in December 2022, as was an appeal to another employee of the same firm in January 2023, the tribunal heard.
There was no further contact from the respondent until June 2023, when the firm’s UK HR director wrote to state she had been asked to conduct a disciplinary hearing in connection with the allegations raised a year earlier, the WRC heard.
When the complainant expressed her view that there had been “numerous procedural flaws” in the disciplinary process, the UK HR director’s response was: “I’m sorry. I will be going ahead with this process today.”
He said the UK HR director had been “completely unsuited to the task at hand”. An outcome letter issued in July 2023 concluded Ms Baxter had breached trust and confidence and immediately terminated her employment.
An appeal – once again to Graphite HRM – was rejected.
Mr Lowey said in his submission that the appeal process was “a farce” and notes from a hearing showed the firm “made absolutely no effort to engage in any of the details or the complainant’s grounds of appeal”.
Ms Urbon, for the order of nuns, said the respondent “followed the correct procedures” and the decision to dismiss Ms Baxter for “gross misconduct” was “substantively fair”.
In his decision, adjudicator Breiffni O’Neill noted the UK HR director – who told him in evidence that she decided to “reinvestigate” the allegations when she took over the disciplinary process – only seemed to have upheld one of the four, the claim about falsified annual leave records.
“Incredibly, I noted that the UK HR director made this finding without seeking to interview Sister A, a crucial witness ... on the basis that her memory was fading and relied instead on the evidence that Sister A gave [the earlier investigation],” Mr O’Neill said.
He also noted that the UK HR director “inexplicably disregarded” witness statements from the order’s HR administrator, stating that she had seen Sister A signing Ms Baxter’s annual leave slips a number of times.
“The callous nature of the complainant’s treatment and the disregard shown to her, both as a human being and an employee of long service ... [is] indicative of the respondent’s treatment of her throughout the entire process and is not the conduct of a reasonable employer,” Mr O’Neill wrote.
“This is an extraordinary case, representing one of the most egregious examples of the mistreatment of an employee by an employer that I have encountered in my professional life.”
He said he would have preferred to make an order reinstating Ms Baxter to “fully vindicate” her, but he had to respect her wishes and award compensation instead.
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