A MANAGER with an airport food company has been awarded €25,000 after he was sacked following a row about his refusal to sign off on meals being loaded on to flights.
An Employment Appeals Tribunal found that Kieran McCann of Coolgariff Road, Beaumont, was unfairly dismissed by Gate Gourmet Ireland of Dublin airport.
The tribunal was told that the transport manager of Gate Gourmet had emailed an instruction to Mr McCann in June 2007 to complete a form for Air Canada detailing the number of meals being loaded onto their flights.
The bottom of the form stated "prepared by:" followed by a blank space for a signature. Mr McCann, a manager in the dispatch unit, replied that he didn't feel he could sign the form and that he would have to discuss it with his union.
He told the tribunal he took issue with signing the form as the dispatch unit had no involvement with the meals being prepared for, or loaded on to, the aircraft.
Mr McCann, who had worked for the company since 1998 and had been promoted twice, did not believe that the request to sign the form was reasonable, but rather that it would be fraudulent, as he could not confirm that the items had been loaded on to the plane.
When he continued to refuse to sign the form he was dismissed "with immediate effect".
In its determination yesterday the tribunal said it was not reasonable to ask an employee to perform a function that could be considered fraudulent.
" . . . this was a trivial matter which had no major import to the company, financially or otherwise, and could have been corrected had a reasonable approach been taken to the incident," the tribunal found. "An employee is required to obey all reasonable instructions from an employer, but should only do so where those instructions are lawful."An instruction that could be considered fraudulent is not a lawful instruction."