An experienced trade union official repeatedly failed to take direction from her Siptu line manager and ignored standard procedures, a Workplace Relations Commission hearing in Waterford was told on Thursday.
Ger Malone also exposed her employer to a potential defamation claim after giving an unauthorised interview to Gript media about the treatment of staff at two local authorities where she was involved in representing workers, adjudicating officer Marie Flynn heard.
It was the third day of the case taken by Ms Malone, a full-time organiser with Siptu since 2002, who alleges she was penalised after making 17 protected disclosures regarding the management and culture of the union.
Representing the union, senior official Karan O’Loughlin said Siptu contends only three of the 17 communications qualified as protected disclosures under the terms of the 2014 Act and denies any penalisation took place.
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Ms O’Loughlin said the majority of the alleged disclosures related to Ms Malone’s views on the treatment of members working at Kilkenny and Carlow county councils.
Her job, it was argued, was to represent the members within the existing structures of the union, but Ms Malone had repeatedly sought to bypass her line managers when she did not agree with decisions taken and sought the intervention of the union’s general secretary and deputy general secretary.
Ms Malone alleges there was a campaign to undermine her and she was not properly supported by her employer in her work because she had sought to expose “wrongdoing”.
Ms O’Loughlin said the complainant had made “generalised allegations” in her submission “in relation to gender discrimination, political discrimination, bullying, unfair management practices and unfair industrial relations practices”.
“These allegations are not evidenced in any way throughout Ms Malone’s submissions and no information is provided in relation to them that would amount to ‘a relevant wrongdoing’.”
The commission did not, Ms O’Loughlin argued, have jurisdiction to consider these complaints. Ten of 29 allegations of penalisation have previously been held to be time-barred, while a decision is to be made regarding a further eight.
In November 2022 Ms Malone gave an interview to the online news site Gript making serious allegations against the councils in relation to the treatment of staff which the union’s legal advisers believed had potentially exposed it to a defamation case.
The day after the interview went online, the union received an email from the Local Government Management Association asking “can you confirm that the views expressed in the [interview] represent the views of Siptu?”.
It was the first time Ms Malone’s line manager or the union generally had been made aware of the interview.
After Siptu’s external lawyers advised that an effort should be made to have the video removed from the news site, they also raised concerns about how it had reached the point where members’ grievances were being dealt with publicly in this way.
The sides are to consult on a date for the resumption of the case, which Ms Malone estimated would take a further four days.
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