FULL RECOMMENDATION
PARTIES : ST JAMES HOSPITAL DIVISION :
SUBJECT: 1.Appeal of Adjudication Officer Decision No(s). ADJ-00026993, CA-00034522-001. BACKGROUND: I recommend the Employer approaches this review in a sympathetic manner towards the Employee. I recommend that the ambiguity created by the Employer must be addressed and that fairness should prevail. I recommend that the review process should be concluded within six weeks of the date below. ” A Labour Court hearing took place in a virtual setting on 18 February 2022. DECISION: The Claimant applied for and was appointed to a position at the grade of Clinical Nurse Manager 1 (CNM1) in January 2015. Her appointment ended on 17thSeptember 2017 and the claim before the Court was made on the employer on 12thSeptember 2019. The Claimant contends that she should have been graded as a CNM2 while occupying the post between January 2015 and her departure from that post in September 2017. She contends that the role was upgraded to CNM2 sometime in 2018. The employer rejects the claim and contends that the role occupied by the Claimant from 2015 to 2017 was correctly graded as CNM1 and that the role was different to a CNM2 role. The Court has been provided with Role Profiles for the posts of CNM1 and CNM2 dating from the material time and against that background has heard submissions from the Claimant that the CNM1 and CNM2 Role Profiles are identical and from the employer to say that they are not. The Court can observe that the two Role Profiles provided to the Court are not, as alleged by the Claimant, identical and notes the contentions of the parties in respect of the apparent differences. The matter before the Court is essentially a grading dispute relating to a role that was graded at CNM1 from 2015 to 2017. The Claimant seeks a payment of €10,000 which she calculates is the difference between what she earned as a CNM1 graded worker from January 2015 to September 2017 and what she calculates she would have earned if she had been a CNM2 graded worker at that time. No claim in respect of the grading of the post was made when it was advertised in November 2014 or throughout the Claimant’s occupancy of the post from January 2015 to September 2017. In fact, no claim or grievance in relation to the matter was raised in any formal way until September 2019 which was almost five years after the Claimant took up the role and two full years after she had departed the role. The Court notes the fact that the parties fully dispute the grading of the post in question and that their dispute is centrally based on their contrasting assessments of the technical and clinical responsibilities attaching to the posts of CNM1 versus CNM2 at the material time. Against the background set out above the Court believes that the timeframes involved are such as to mean that there can be no practicality to the proposition that a post which was competed for at CNM1 level in November 2014 should be regraded over seven years later and over four years after the departure of the Claimant from the role. For this reason, the Court does not recommend concession of the claim before it. The Court so decides.
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