Courts

Tobacco distributer accused of driving sales manager to quit after she suffered anxiety attacks due to workplace stress

JT Ireland denies accusations of constructive dismissal made by former brand manager who resigned from her job of 13 years after being put on performance improvement plan

The manager told the Workplace Relations Commission that her GP attempted to get her to step back from work in spring 2021, after she first suffered anxiety attacks. Photograph: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

Stephen Bourke
Wed Mar 15 2023 - 15:39

Ireland’s biggest tobacco distributor has been accused of driving a sales manager to quit by putting her on a performance improvement plan after she was advised to take sick leave for anxiety which she says was triggered by workplace stress.

“I didn’t want to go out sick. I didn’t want to put pressure on the rest of the team,” the manager told the Workplace Relations Commission of her GP’s first attempt to get her to step back in spring 2021, after she first suffered anxiety attacks.

JTI Ireland Ltd, the Irish subsidiary of the top-five global tobacco firm, Japan Tobacco International, denies accusations of constructive dismissal levelled at it by former brand manager Caroline McGarry, who resigned from her job of 13 years last September after being put on a performance improvement plan (PIP).

The company maintains an annual review that rated Ms McGarry as “needs improvement” did not consider periods when she was off work and submits that she did not raise concerns about her workload when she came back from leave.

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Opening her statutory complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act before the WRC, Ms McGarry’s barrister Cillian McGovern BL, who appeared instructed by solicitor Barry Crushell, said his client had suffered “significant stress and anxiety” as a result of cutbacks in her area of work during a global restructuring plan – leading to “burnout”.

He said his client’s concerns about the review leading to the performance plan “fell on deaf ears” and that she had been “showed towards the door by being put on a PIP”, adding that she had “no alternative except to resign”.

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Ms McGarry said that the symptoms all came “gradually”.

“I had always been busy. I took the responsibilities of the role seriously, but I started to have pressure in my chest, almost as though I was being sat on,” she said of the period following the restructuring.

“With my family, it took its toll. With work, when I raised it with line managers or above, there was a [sense] that it was happening everywhere, it was happening across the company,” she said.

She said she raised her workload with her line manager at the time, Garin Murphy, at catch-up meetings at the time.

“It was said I was a drain, he found our catch-up meetings ‘draining’, because there never seemed to be good news,” she said.

Later, at a performance review in early 2021, she said Mr Murphy told her she was “appearing cynical” and that she “needed to project a more steady persona”.

She said at the time the digital sales platform she was responsible for was handling a larger volume of sales than normal as the company’s field team couldn’t travel to customers.

“I felt powerless, I didn’t know how to cope. I went to my GP in February with the hope that it was something that could be fixed – anemia or something else causing the symptoms, that it’d be a simple fix because I didn’t want not to cope,” Ms McGarry said.

Soon after this, in April 2021, her GP insisted strongly that she take time off, prescribed anti-anxiety medication and then “upped the dose”, she said.

The firm referred her to an occupational therapist the following month, who questioned her potential causes of stress other than work, Ms McGarry said.

“I said there were none,” she said.

She added that prior to returning to work six weeks later, the occupational therapist had suggested a further review meeting, but that this “never happened” and was “never mentioned” by the company’s HR department.

Ms McGarry said she was “floored” when she was presented with the “needs improvement” annual review rating for 2021 on a call with a new line manager, Rebeca Crotty, in January 2022.

“[The call] needed to be cut short because I had my first anxiety attack in nine months afterwards,” she said, adding that her GP again increased the dosage of her anti-anxiety medication after this.

The complainant said her concerns with the review document were “quashed” by management and she had to “put my head down and keep going”.

She said she suffered another anxiety attack when the performance plan based on that review was put to her, and that the only response to her further protests in an April 2022 letter to the firm’s Ireland HR chief Linda Cramer, was: “well received and noted”.

“I felt gaslit. I felt as though what I was experiencing wasn’t being recognised, that it wasn’t important,” she said.

“I realised I didn’t want to medicate to do my job, so to save myself and protect myself, I resigned, because no, I didn’t feel I had any other option because I didn’t want to relapse,” she said.

Cross-examining the complainant, its solicitor, Rachel Barry of Arthur Cox, said Ms Crotty would give evidence that she had no awareness that Ms McGarry suffered panic attacks associated with the review meeting and performance plan calls.

“Did you tell Ms Crotty you were stressed because of your work?” Ms Barry asked.

“I can’t remember whether I did so,” Ms McGarry said.

“Ms Crotty will say you didn’t,” counsel replied, going on to put it to the complainant that her workload “wasn’t through the roof” when she returned to work.

Ms Barry added that Ms McGarry didn’t “absolutely fail” the annual review.

“Do you accept Ms Crotty’s role as a manager, if she feels you’re not performing… she has a duty to the company to raise that with you?” Ms Barry asked.

“She does. She also has a duty of care,” Ms McGarry said.

In submissions, Ms Barry said Ms McGarry’s constructive dismissal suit was “not sustainable”.

“The firm maintains it was not aware Ms McGarry “perceived her problems to be work-related” until May 2021, when it referred her to its own occupational therapist after four weeks of stress leave.

She said the complainant told her bosses that she would “endeavour to meet” targets in the performance plan before she “resigned suddenly” three weeks later.

Adjudicating officer Kara Turner adjourned the matter to a future date, yet to be set by the WRC but no earlier than May, when the tribunal is expected to hear the evidence of Ms McGarry’s last line manager, Rebecca Crotty, on behalf of the defence.

JTI Ireland Ltd, which claims a majority market share in Ireland, sells the cigarette brands Benson & Hedges, Silk Cut and Camel, along with Amber Leaf pouch tobacco, Hamlet cigars and the Logic nicotine vape brand.

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