A council worker who said he was strangled with a seatbelt by a colleague who threatened to “sort [him] out” has been awarded €20,000 over Wexford County Council’s handling of the incident.
His trade union argued before the Workplace Relations Commission that the council “do not follow any procedures and do not put any supports in place for an individual who finds themselves in a difficult scenario” and that people were “being damaged in a very big way”.
The tribunal ruled the worker suffered reduced overtime and diminished duties after making a formal complaint about the behaviour – with an adjudicating officer saying the case was “at the most serious end of the scale”.
The tribunal made the findings on foot of a complaint of penalisation under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 lodged by Patrick O’Connor against Wexford County Council, which was published on Friday.
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Mr O’Connor said he was assaulted by Mr F in November 2019 when the two of them were travelling in a council vehicle, when Mr F wrapped a seatbelt around his neck and “started to strangle him”.
The complainant said Mr F strangled him for “some time” before releasing the belt and that when it stopped, he got out of the van, fell on to the footpath and threw up.
Mr O’Connor said an argument broke out between himself and Mr F in July 2021, when Mr F approached him at the 1798 Rebellion centre at Vinegar Hill in Enniscorthy and accused him of failing to sweep up litter at a car park in the town.
“I asked him who gives him the authority to question my work,” Mr O’Connor said, adding that Mr F then became “extremely aggressive” and had to be restrained by the acting foreman.
The complainant said Mr F came at him “with his fist clenched and his voice raised, saying that I’d better shut my mouth or he’d shut it for me and stop talking about him”.
“In between this violent behaviour, [Mr F] said with a waving clenched fist, that he would meet me after work in the 1798 centre and sort me out. I said – and I don’t deny saying this – I called him a ‘freak’,” Mr O’Connor said.
Mr O’Connor said that when he told Mr F he would report him over the earlier seatbelt incident, Mr F responded with a “loud hearty laugh”.
“He put his head back, put his two hands around his neck, and performed a choking act. I said in my mind: ‘He’s mad’,” Mr O’Connor said.
The complainant said that after he left the 1798 centre he phoned the council’s head office and spoke to an official there seeking to raise the matter, and later flagged down the acting foreman to ask him whether he would be a witness.
“He said he would not be a witness,” Mr O’Connor said.
The complainant said that after making an official complaint, the acting foreman stopped taking him out in a work vehicle to carry out duties, as had been the routine up to that point, and he was left to work alone.
Mr O’Connor said his overtime was also blocked.
The complainant said a council official had filled out an incident report form for him in July 2021, but Wexford County Council HR officer Ciara O’Reilly told the WRC that the complaint did not reach the HR department until January 2022.
In a legal submission, she said the contents of Mr O’Connor’s complaint about the July 2021 incident at Vinegar Hill were “fully investigated” and not upheld.
Ms O’Reilly denied under cross-examination from the complainant’s representative, Siptu official Ger Malone, that Mr O’Connor had been “ostracised” and “continues to be ostracised”.
The HR officer also disputed the complainant’s claim that he had lost out on overtime and gave evidence that she had timesheets showing the hours had not been reduced.
“These were completed and signed by Mr O’Connor himself,” Ms O’Reilly said, and said they could be “emailed in” to the WRC if necessary.
“It’s a bit late now. We’re in the middle of a hearing,” said adjudicating officer Niamh O’Carroll. “I’m not going to allow you send them in now, at this stage. That would be prejudicial. It’s going to be your word against his word,” the adjudicator told Ms O’Reilly.
In a closing submission, Ms Malone, for the complainant, sought an order that the adjudicator appoint one of a list of named individuals to deal with her client’s complaint.
“It’s essential we don’t have any more Mickey Mouse investigations or appeals or anything else. Wexford County Council do not follow any procedures and do not put any supports in place for an individual who finds themselves in a difficult scenario. This man has been sick, he’s been to the doctor, he’s complained that he can’t function properly, he can’t sleep – his whole family life is in disarray,” she said.
“It is characteristic of the way complaints are being dealt with and people are being damaged here, and they’re being damaged in a very big way,” Ms Malone added.
Ms O’Carroll said that although she might have been in a position to make an order appointing an investigator if the claim bad been brought under the Industrial Relations Act, there was no such power granted to her under the Health, Safety and Welfare at Work Act.
In her decision, published by the Workplace Relations Commission, the adjudicator wrote: “The allegations are extremely serious and should have been dealt with immediately.”
She said Mr O’Connor was a “very credible witness who did not, despite the seriousness of the allegations, embellish or exaggerate his evidence in any way”.
Wexford County Council, on the other hand, had “no supporting documentation” for its position that Mr O’Connor had not lost overtime – and that the complainant’s account of being “isolate[d] and ostracised” after the incident was left “uncontroverted”, Ms O’Carroll wrote.
Ms O’Carroll wrote that she was satisfied that Mr O’Connor’s complaint met the threshold for a protected act under the health and safety legislation and that he had suffered a detriment as a result.
Upholding the complaint, the adjudicator wrote that Wexford County Council’s failure to investigate, and the detriments imposed, were “at the most serious end of the scale” – awarding €20,000 compensation.