A worker who was subjected to an “interrogation” over allegations of racism after he threw a soap bottle in a break room row has won €11,000 for unfair dismissal.
Gerard Maunsell’s complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against Richard Boyle & Sons (2004) Ltd was upheld by the Workplace Relations Commission, which ruled he had been subject to a “fundamentally flawed” investigation and disciplinary process and a disproportionate sanction.
The tribunal heard the row between the workers broke out in their employer’s canteen at 8.30am on Friday, November 12th, 2021, when Mr Maunsell said the other worker, identified only as “RR” in a published decision, came into the canteen and said: “Maunsell, you bigot, stop taking the soap.”
The complainant’s response was: “F**k you”, as he “threw the soap in his [Mr RR’s] direction”, he told the tribunal.
It was the company’s position that Mr Maunsell had told RR: “You should go back to your own f**king country, you foreign c**t”, before throwing the soap bottle “at him”.
Under cross-examination by the employer’s representative, Terence O’Sullivan of TJOS Solicitors, Mr Maunsell admitted saying: “F**k you, you f**king prick” but that he “never mentioned the words ‘foreign c**t’”.
Mr Maunsell’s evidence was that he and Mr RR had not been on speaking terms at the time of the row.
The tribunal heard Mr Maunsell had been called to his boss’s office “without prior notice” the same day and was questioned without knowing the exact details of what had been alleged against him.
The company’s general manager, Adrian Boyle, told the tribunal that Mr Maunsell “refused to acknowledge what he said” at the meeting, adding that he had “no choice only to inform him of the seriousness of the investigation”.
None of the three witnesses Mr Boyle had spoken to were available for cross-examination and Mr Maunsell had no representative.
Five days after the incident, the company invited Mr Maunsell to a disciplinary meeting with Mr Boyle and the company’s HR adviser, Damian McCarthy.
Mr Boyle said there was no investigation report issued between a disciplinary meeting on November 22nd, 2021, and a dismissal letter on November 25th – stating that his “mind was set that this was serious misconduct in the meeting” and that he did not consider any sanction other than dismissal.
The manager said Mr Maunsell “stonewalled my questions” and that he regarded a prepared statement read out by the complainant, in which he apologised to the company, to be “completely unclear” – and that what he had been hoping for from the complainant was: “If he held his hands up.”
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Mr Maunsell’s solicitor, Miriam McGillycuddy, put it to the witness that four different witness statements “each had a different account of what was alleged to have been said”, but Mr Boyle maintained that all witnesses had “substantiated the racial abuse allegation”.
The firm’s HR adviser, Mr McCarthy, told the tribunal he “chose to prolong the hearing” to give Mr Maunsell a chance to apologise, but that the complainant “would not take the opportunity” to make an admission.
He said the apology offered was a “very watery attempt”.
Mr Maunsell said Mr McCarthy told him to “grow a pair of balls”, asking him several times whether he was a “racist” – and had interrupted him “at least five times” as he read his prepared statement to the disciplinary meeting.
He said he knew he was wrong to use “abusive language” and “put his hands up” to that at the meeting and apologised.
Mr McCarthy and Mr Boyle “did not want to listen” over the course of the disciplinary meeting, which went on for an hour and 45 minutes, he said.
The complainant’s appeal was rejected by the firm.
In her decision, WRC adjudicating officer Úna Glazier-Farmer wrote that Mr Maunsell had been subject to “appalling” treatment in a disciplinary process “fundamentally flawed from the outset”.
She said dismissal was “entirely disproportionate”, in particular because there had been no consideration of the worker’s own complaints against the colleague who had accused him.
“The meeting . . . can be only described as an interrogation by the respondent. Prolonging a disciplinary meeting in an attempt to extract some sort of confession from an employee is no way to conduct a fair and impartial disciplinary,” Ms Glazier-Farmer wrote, adding that the employer’s conduct “fell significantly short of what is expected of a reasonable employer”.
Ms Glazier-Farmer upheld Mr Maunsell’s unfair dismissal complaint and ordered the firm to pay him compensation of €4,860 for his financial loss before he found new work and a further €6,480 for the loss of redundancy entitlements arising from his five years’ service – €11,340 in total.
She dismissed a secondary claim by Mr Maunsell under the Payment of Wages Act, finding the matter was outside the WRC’s jurisdiction.
