A tribunal has said it was “reasonable” for a company to ask a Kerry-based worker who had been on a fully remote contract to travel to an office in Dublin once a month – after his employer pulled back from requesting him on site at least twice a week.
In a decision on Wednesday, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) rejected a complaint by Rafael Jorge against his employer, Centric Mental Health of RSA House, Sandyford Road, Dundrum, Dublin 16. It is just the second ever ruling in a case pursued under the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023.
Mr Jorge, an accounts worker who represented himself before the employment tribunal, explained that he had turned down a job offer and agreed to stay on with Centric in August 2022, when he was offered a fully remote contract starting from the following month.
On January 11th, 2024, following a conversation the previous month, a Centric HR officer wrote to Mr Jorge to tell him he was “required to attend” its offices at the Dundrum Town Centre in Dublin “a minimum of two days per week”, the tribunal noted.
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“We acknowledge that you received a letter from a former HR colleague, however, as discussed, the needs of the business have changed,” the HR officer wrote – with the letter telling Mr Jorge the change would begin the following month.
“My contract is fully remote and I live in Tralee, Co Kerry, thus making it impossible for me to come. I have stated to them numerous times of my impossibility to come, but they are still insisting,” Mr Jorge wrote in a legal submission.
He refused to sign off on the arrangement and raised a formal grievance with his employer, the tribunal was told.
In response, Centric’s HR director reduced the requirement for Mr Jorge to attend the Dundrum office to just one day a month.
Mr Jorge’s sought a pay rise, lunch allowance and travel expenses if that was to be implemented. The business offered the lunch allowance and travel expenses.
Centric’s position was that it wanted Mr Jorge back in the office for “sound business reasons”, identifying a need to “increase the quality of communication between colleagues” and to “take account of the changing circumstances of the company”.
With other colleagues being required to attend twice a week, the firm argued the requirement proposed to Mr Jorge was “reasonable and fair having regard to the previous amendment made in the contract”.
At a hearing in June this year, Mr Jorge maintained Centric was “bound to honour” the terms of the August 2022 amendment to his employment contract.
Adjudicator Brian Dalton noted the dispute around going back to the office arose prior to the new legislation coming into force, but said he would consider the matter on the basis that Mr Jorge’s continuing objection to attending the office on the reduced number of days was a request for remote work.
Mr Dalton said he could only make a finding under the new legislation on the process used by the employer to consider the request, and not the “merit” of a change in terms.
He found the employer had complied with its legal obligations and carried out an assessment that considered the business’s needs against the employee’s needs – and come out with “a significant change to what the business would prefer based on the needs of the employee”.
One day a month in the Dublin office was “a reasonable change” in Mr Jorge’s terms, he added, as he dismissed the complaint.
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