A claim by a Dublin employee of An Post that she was penalised after making a complaint against a supervisor who “whacked” her chair and told her to serve a customer has been rejected by the Labour Court.
Veronica Dowling told the court she felt her workplace had become “unsafe and hostile” after reporting the incident to a manager who, she believed, endorsed her the supervisor’s behaviour by failing to act.
Ms Dowling was appealing a decision of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) which found no basis for the claim she had been penalised for making the complaint.
The court upheld that decision and another, in a related case, in which Ms Dowling had been awarded €1,000 in compensation for age-related harassment after she said she had been mocked by the same supervisor when she was told a Gibert O’Sullivan song on the radio was “her vintage” and a number of younger colleagues laughed.
Ms Dowling took the penalisation case against An Post under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 in relation to an incident at the St Andrew’s Street branch of An Post on June 5th, 2020 when she alleged her supervisor gave her chair she was in at a counter a “resounding whack” and suggested aggressively that she “serve the customer”.
She said she felt alarm and shock, that the act of punching or whacking another person’s chair was threatening and unacceptable, and she took the matter up with her union.
She made an official complaint against the supervisor but during the subsequent investigation by a HR manager, Kevin Cullen, a dispute arose over access to CCTV footage he suggested showed the incident was not as serious as she was alleging.
She said she was told she could only view the footage if she admitted she was mistaken though a letter introduced as evidence suggested it had been put to her watching the footage might prompt her to realise she was mistaken. She said she felt she was not being listened to.
No agreement, in any case, could be initially reached on when and where she could watch the footage with Ms Dowling declining to watch it at the post office branch while colleague were in the building.
She subsequently made a complaint about Mr Cullen’s handling of the case and referred the original issue to the WRC as well as reporting it to the Health and Safety Authority before the internal procedures had been exhausted.
Having taken sick leave in the wake of the incident – Ms Dowling was certified by her GP to be suffering from stress and never returned to her role – her sick pay was halved after 92 days of absence in one 12 month period, and payments were later stopped entirely.
The court ultimately found, however, that the halving of the sick pay was in line with her terms of employment and its cessation came after her complaint was made to the WRC and could not therefore be considered. There was no evidence, it found, that she had been penalised for making the complaint.
In relation to the harassment case, the court found the age-related comments made were inappropriate.
“In this case,” the court said, “the complainant’s evidence was that she felt ridiculed and made to feel different because of her age. In reply, the respondent submits that the supervisor believed the comment to a lighthearted remark, which was made entirely off-the-cuff and without malice. He made a full and heartfelt apology to her, there and then.
“Whether the comment was made as part of workplace banter or playful teasing is irrelevant to the impact of the comment on the complainant, which had the effect of violating her dignity at work,” the court said in its decision.
It said the appropriate remedy was compensation and felt the €1,000 the WRC had ordered An Post to pay her was appropriate. It upheld that decision and rejected her appeal.
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