A sacked hospital catering supervisor has accused her former boss of orchestrating multiple bullying complaints that cast her as “racist”.
The worker, Annette Ryan, also said an allegation that she told a junior colleague, “You’re not Irish, you’re black”, had been made up by the worker.
“How can I be racist? I’ve worked with these people for 13 years,” she told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC). Her evidence was that she had worked with “people from Nigeria, China, everywhere” at Waterford Hospital and was “not a bit like that”.
Ms Ryan was summarily dismissed from her job as a catering supervisor at University Hospital Waterford on foot of findings of gross misconduct in September 2023. She had been suspended from the job the month before after four junior catering staff made formal complaints against her that July, the WRC heard.
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The detail of the complaints against Ms Ryan was not disclosed in full by the company or its witnesses at a public hearing into her Unfair Dismissals Act claim against her former employer, Campbell Catering Ltd, trading as Aramark.
Its representative, Ibec employer relations executive Brian Joyce, said in a legal submission that the junior staff had accused Ms Ryan of “bullying, intimidation, harassment and discrimination”.
Managers considered it necessary to suspend Ms Ryan pending investigation because of the seriousness of the allegations and the “fear” expressed by the other workers, he said.
“I felt treated very unfairly,” Ms Ryan said in her evidence. She said she told the company’s site manager at the hospital, Marcin Skrzypczak, that she wanted to “sit down and talk” with the other workers. The company’s position was that the fact that formal complaints were made in the first instance made that impossible.
“I got no warning, nothing. I felt very down and depressed in myself because I wasn’t heard. I wasn’t given a chance to say anything was untrue, because I was told not to speak to anyone,” she said.
Ms Ryan claimed Mr Skrzypczak was “very intimidating” when he suspended her. Her evidence was that he “stood up [and] towered over me” in attempt to confiscate her building access cards. He then “frogmarched” her out of the workplace and told her not to talk to her colleagues, she said.
“Marcin was behind all of it,” she said of the allegations. “I don’t think Marcin liked me; it’s like as if he fed them all this. I was out with these people, I socialised with all these people. I couldn’t understand it.”
Questioning Ms Ryan, adjudicator Gaye Cunningham said: “I mean, as it’s been stated, there were a number of serious allegations made against you. Is it your case that you just said this didn’t happen? Did you think they all made it up, or what?”
Ms Cunningham put it to Ms Ryan that the disciplinary officer had referred to “serious” allegations. “Is it your position that you deny this?” the adjudicator asked.
“I think the most serious part for me was that it made me out to be racist. One person said that when we were up in the A&E that I said: ‘You’re not Irish, you’re black’, or something like that. That wasn’t the case at all, I’m not a bit like that, that’s what I said to them,” she said.
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“You think he made that up, is it?” Ms Cunningham asked.
“The person who said it, made it up? Of course he did,” Ms Ryan said.
In his evidence, Mr Skrzypczak denied Ms Ryan’s account of her suspension. “I’ve over 20 years working in hospitals dealing with people. The last thing I’d do would be touching someone to take a badge,” he said. “I didn’t feed anyone [anything] to go forward. People started coming to me, and as a site manager, I am responsible to act.”
Brian Joyce of Ibec, who appeared for Aramark, said Alan Gilroy, a senior manager who heard Ms Ryan’s appeal in the matter and upheld the summary dismissal in December 2023, was not available as a witness, but that the company was prepared to defend the claim without him.
“The complainant was afforded a fair and impartial determination of the issues,” Mr Joyce said. “Any allegation the process was flawed is denied.”
Questioned on what losses she was seeking to recover, Ms Ryan explained that she had been out of work from September 2023 to March 2024, when she took up a full-time position in a convenience store deli counter earning €14 an hour, which was more than she earned with Aramark.
Adjudicator Gaye Cunningham gave the complainant two weeks to provide documentary evidence of her efforts to find new work following her dismissal before closing the hearing.
