A local newspaper has failed to convince a tribunal that its offer to get a receptionist a baseball bat to deal with a homeless man who repeatedly came to their office intoxicated was a “metaphor” – and has been ordered to pay her €45,000 after sacking her for making a formal health and safety complaint.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) was told that after staff at the Killarney Advertiser asked its managing director to sign off on installing a gate as a safety measure, their boss said he would get the receptionist a baseball bat to keep at her desk and called a plan to install a security gate a “waste of time”. However, the managing director said his comment was “a metaphor” to say that the company “would go to any lengths to protect staff”.
The tribunal has now ordered the publisher of the free sheet newspaper to pay compensation worth close to two years’ gross wages to the receptionist, Laura O’Regan, after ruling she had been sacked for making a protected disclosure in breach of the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977. The decision was issued to the parties more than five years on from Ms O’Regan’s dismissal on September 2019, and was published on Thursday by the WRC.
Ms O’Regan’s evidence to the tribunal was that a man who was “living rough” nearby started coming to the newspaper’s office starting in May 2019, and would stare at her and leave her feeling “generally intimidated”.
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Ms O’Regan said that after making the editor of the title aware of the seriousness of the situation there was a discussion about installing a gate at the front desk to control access, but although measurements were taken the gate was never installed.
The WRC heard disputed accounts of a series of meetings which followed. Ms O’Regan said that the day after she complained she was called into a “back office” meeting with the editor, the manager, and the newspaper’s proprietor, Cormac Casey. She said they were “angry with her”.
The complainant’s evidence was that Mr Casey said there had been “no need” for her to put her concerns in writing, and that he would get her “a baseball bat to put behind the counter”. She was dismissed the following Friday when the general manager handed her a letter and told her she “no longer worked there”, citing “performance issues”. Ms O’Regan said that when she asked the manager if it was “about the health and safety report” he “just looked at the floor”.
Gavin Cumiskey of Peninsula Business Services, who appeared for the company when the tribunal held hearings on the case in 2022, submitted: “The complainant was dismissed based on the overall needs of the business [and] the direct feedback of her line manager, who said that [Ms O’Regan] would not be able to cover [the line manager’s] role during maternity leave, declining sales, and sales activity.”
Adjudicator Maria Kelly found Ms O’Regan’s safety complaint had amounted to a protected disclosure, as she had been fearful for the safety of herself and her colleagues and had a “legitimate expectation” that the control gate which had been discussed would be installed.
She ordered the publisher to pay €45,000 in compensation, an award worth nearly 98 weeks’ gross wages for Ms O’Regan.
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