A “seismic omission” by HSE management saw a worker who “stayed at home when he was required to work” remain on full pay for two and a half years before he was eventually deemed to be absent without leave, the Workplace Relations Commission has found.
The worker had told the WRC that he was “physically unable” to make occupational health appointments as he had experienced a nervous breakdown, but also accepted that he had not received any diagnosis of depression.
The tribunal noted that “light touch in the extreme” management by the health service meant they got “very little productivity” from the worker, Shane Ryan, from the autumn of 2019 to January 2021, while they continued to pay him his full salary and benefits.
The tribunal rejected Shane Ryan’s complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, finding that he had repudiated his contract of employment after over two decades with the health service by refusing to engage with his bosses.
Markets in Vienna or Christmas at The Shelbourne? 10 holiday escapes over the festive season
Ciara Mageean: ‘I just felt numb. It wasn’t even sadness, it was just emptiness’
Stealth sackings: why do employers fire staff for minor misdemeanours?
Carl and Gerty Cori: a Nobel Prizewinning husband and wife team
It also rejected a series of allied pay and working time complaints – but it did award him €1,200 for unpaid public holiday entitlements.
The HSE told the WRC it moved to transfer some pest control staff in 2020, including Mr Ryan, to other duties after ending the use of rodenticides in 2018.
Mr Ryan said he had been forced to take six months’ sick leave from February 2019 onward over the effects of alleged bullying by a now-retired colleague – and that when he returned, there was “no work” for him to do in pest control.
His solicitor, Terence J O’Sullivan, said in a legal submission that his client “sought to receive a workload repeatedly, but this vacuum persisted for two to three years”– a situation of “isolation” and “limbo”, counsel said.
Mr Ryan said he “felt abandoned” and was becoming “depressed” with “no anchor at the office, just a temporary stop-off in the morning followed by time at home”.
The tribunal heard Mr Ryan “opposed” going back to work as a hospital porter at Cork University Hospital in August 2020 and was shortly afterwards offered an alternative doing pest control for the HSE at St Finbarr’s Hospital.
Mr Ryan deemed the St Finbarr’s role to be “not comparable” with his existing position.
Appearing for the health service, Eamonn Ross of the HSE’s employee relations department said Mr Ryan “rejected this offer and remained away from the workplace, in receipt of pay”.
Mr Ryan was asked again in November 2021 if he would work in transport at St Finbarr’s on an “interim” basis pending a return to pest control, Mr Ross said, adding that “intense efforts” were made to get Mr Ryan to return to work.
The health service twice put Mr Ryan on notice, starting in January 2022, that his pay “would cease if he did not turn up for work”, but to no avail, Mr Ross said.
April 2022 correspondence from HSE to Mr Ryan referred to him as “AWOL”, the tribunal noted.
Mr Ross said Mr Ryan refused to engage with requests to attend meetings or occupational health appointments before the complainant was told that if he continued to fail to engage, the HSE would have to take it that he did not want to stay in its employment.
Mr Ryan’s pay was stopped on January 31st 2022 and his employment then terminated on June 7th 2022, the WRC noted.
In a decision published on the on the dismissal claim and multiple further employment law complaints against the HSE, adjudicator Patsy Doyle noted that the entire “management team” around Mr Ryan “seemed to retire” at the relevant time.
She found that wrote that Mr Ryan “was not a regular attender at work over a three-year period” with only a “tenuous link to his employment from 2019 to 2021″.
“During this time, he received full pay,” Ms Doyle wrote.
“I must conclude that what I am seeing here is an incidence of ‘a quiet quitting’ or associated burnout, rather than a concerted effort to work with the respondent to, at the very minimum, try the pest control job,” Ms Doyle wrote.
Ms Doyle wrote that she could not accept Mr Ryan’s absence from the workplace was down to sick leave.
Ms Doyle also levelled criticism at the HSE in her decision, writing that management from 2018 to 2021 had been “light touch in the extreme”.