ONE OF Dunnes Stores’ top buyers, who quit to “promote her career” with Penneys, has been awarded more than €35,000 in the Circuit Civil Court for lost wages and bonuses against her former employer.
Elisabeth MacHale told her counsel, Jim O’Callaghan, that her salary of €120,000 as senior buyer in the bed/bathrooms department of Dunnes was due a €25,000 bonus increase in 2005.
She said Dunnes refused to pay the bonus for target performance after she gave the company a month’s notice of her intention to leave and join Penneys.
Ms MacHale, Enniskerry Road, Stepaside, Dublin, told Judge Terence O’Sullivan that to demean her status, the company told her she would have to leave head office and work out her notice at a store counter.
She said that when she refused to do so on the basis it breached her contract of employment Dunnes had told her to leave immediately and refused to pay her final month’s salary of €10,000 and a pension contribution of €600.
Mr O’Callaghan said an initial bonus of €5,000 in 2001 doubled each year to €20,000 in 2004 when Dunnes’ director Anne Heffernan told her it would be €25,000 for 2005.
When Ms MacHale was seeking a mortgage in 2005 a letter from Dunnes’ salaries manager, Sheila Byrne, had stated her salary was €120,000 a year with an annual bonus of €25,000.
Mr O’Callaghan said she had given in her notice on May 30th, 2006, and on the same day had been told by the personnel department that she would be required to work in one of the Dunnes’ stores.
Ms MacHale told the court this had been done to demean her professional reputation and standing. When she refused, she was told to clear her desk and leave the company’s head office.
Martin Hayden SC, for Dunnes Stores, told the court that Ms MacHale’s bonus was subject to an annual review and when she had left of her own accord in May 2006 this review of her work in 2005 had not taken place.