Worker

Employer

Anonymised Parties

A Medical Devices Technician

A Medical Devices Company

Act

Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Industrial Relations Acts 1969

CA-00071281-001

02/02/2025

Even before completing her orientation, the complainant says she began experiencing workplace bullying. From the very beginning, she took on responsibilities, supported key operations, liaising with the UK team and successfully resolved many critical issues.

She also helped restore the company’s damaged image with certain clients, which is documented in messages from her manager and the director.

While in N. Ireland, it ususally took two engineers to service three devices across two clinics in one day, yet she was expected to service five devices across three different clinics in a single day. A mistake she made (for which she had previously requested support but received none) was combined with an unrelated repair issue and used as a pretext to justify her dismissal.

However, the real reason was the four-day medical leave she took starting on April 14th. Her manager had inadvertently revealed that she was only hired for the winter period. On April 22nd, she began experiencing severe vaginal bleeding.

Despite informing her manager, she was pressurised to come to work thefollowingday.Shevisitedtwohospitalsthatdayandfacedlife-threateninghealthrisks.

She left work around 4pm on April 22nd, and although she had a medical certificate valid until April 25th and was discharged from the hospital at 3 am on April 23rd.  She was forced to return to work at 8am, just five hours later.

When she attempted to explain all of this at the probation review meeting, the director interrupted before she could finish and stated that she was being dismissed. This decision was clearly pre-determined, as the manager and the director are close friends and long-time colleagues. She was not treated objectively and received letter terminating her employment on May 2nd.

Throughout her employment, she was repeatedly asked to clean the two-story office and toilets, despite this being outside her job description. On the day of her dismissal, her manager had her clean the entire office, knowing she would be dismissed. While she was cleaning, she came up to her and said that the company Director was ‘a good person’.

Then she returned and said, “I’m not Hitler.” Later, she came into her office and implied that she had only been hired temporarily due to the slow summer season. However, when she was hired, she had made it clear that she was a Turkish national and would need to work at least one year to qualify for a work permit. At that time, they assured her they wanted to work with her for many years.

She was invited to a probation review meeting On April 30th, during which her manager denied all the pressure and bullying she had experienced. She also denied that, while she was visibly bleeding and in tears, she told her she still had to come to work the next day.

On March 5th, she had taken 8 working days of leave due to her father’s illness.  At the end of April, her pay slip showed that her 20 days of annual leave had been reset.

In March, her February salary was underpaid, and the missing amount was not reimbursed until the end of March. Despite submitting official expense forms for business-related expenses such as car rentals in March and April, totaling €955.85, she was never reimbursed.

In the probation review meeting, her 17-hour workday on April 1st, was falsely portrayed as a spontaneous, one-time issue for which she was responsible. She had frequently worked 12–15 hour days, which they denied during the meeting. She was never provided with any disciplinary policy, employee handbook, or annual leave policy upon starting her employment.

She said that her probation was for a three-month period, but the review did not take place for some time after this.

In her oral submission to the hearing the complainant confirmed that she had submitted two documents following the probation meeting and the termination of her employment contesting the basis for doing so.

This was in response to the company inviting her to appeal the decision to terminate her employment. 

However, despite setting out her position in detail by way of her appeal in these letters she heard nothing further.

The respondent did not attend the hearing.

The complainant is a Turkish national and told the hearing that she had worked as a medical devices technician for eight years before joining the respondent. The respondent did not attend the meeting to offer an alternative to her narrative, which, in some respects, was harrowing.

She described having to work eighteen-hour days and undertake significant travelling responsibilities often at her own expense.

This type of exploitation would be bad enough but where it became harrowing was in the further detail she provided to the hearing about the incident where she was pressurised to come into work the day following, indeed the day of, a hospital admission in the course of which she had lost a considerable amount of blood.

Her account of this was credible and it reflects very badly on the respondent.

The issue on which the complainant relies primarily is the manner of the termination of her employment.

Having only had about four and a half’s month’s service she is not, of course, eligible on these facts to bring a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act. Indeed, where employment is terminated by reason only or primarily of the unsatisfactory completion of a probationary period the bar for doing so is set rather low and in general the only avenue of a complaint will be under the Industrial Relations Acts.

Referrals under s.13 of the 1969 Acts generally arise where parties seek an independent, external adjudication on matters that they have failed to resolve at the level of the workplace. A critical pre-condition before a dispute or grievance referred by a worker will be entertained by the WRC or the Labour Court is whether they have exhausted all internal procedures at the level of the workplace.

This respect for the workplace level processes is sensible both for practical reasons as well as being, in practice, a matter of jurisdiction for a WRC Adjudicator. Where they have been fully and properly used, the WRC Adjudication Service may then exercise an oversight jurisdiction to ensure that this has been done fairly and to the required standard.

This oversight function cuts both ways. A worker may, on the other hand legitimately raise an issue regarding a breach of their rights where the workplace level processes have been bypassed or ignored by an employer.

This even applies in respect of something where there is a significant licence for employer discretion, such as decisions in relation to probation.

That said, workers are entitled, even in the absence of statutory protections such as those provided by the Unfair Dismissals Act, to some recourse against arbitrary or other unfair actions, even where this may not be enforceable as is the case under this legislation.

Thay are at least entitled to the satisfaction of an independent evaluation of how they have been treated in the event that it has been in breach of those equitable principles.

On the basis of the credible submissions of the complainant only, the conduct of the respondent in this case leaves a lot to be desired.

The complainant was invited to a probation review meeting on April 29th, due to take place the following day, April 30th. She was advised of her right to be accompanied by a trade union official, but as she pointed out, she had no possibility of finding one at such short notice.

The offer of such representation was purely tokenistic given that the company was not a unionised workplace. Even if it had been, the notice was impossibly short to arrange representation and was not a serious offer.

The meeting proceeded and she was sent a report of the meeting, erroneously dated May 30th. This was followed by a letter on May 2nd terminating her employment. That letter contained the following sentence.

You do have the right of appeal against this decision, and if you wish to do so then please do so in writing, to myself, within 5 working days of receipt of this letter. If you have any questions at all, or require an additional support please do not hesitate to contact me.

The complainant responded. Her response was headed.

 ‘Subject: Formal Objection to the Meeting Summary and Associated Decisions’.

It is undated but runs to some four pages and sets out in considerable detail her rebuttal of the points made in the respondent’s report of the meeting and the letter terminating her employment.

She did not receive a reply, and she sent a second letter by email on May 2nd.  She did not receive a reply to that either.

While neither of these pieces of correspondence includes an explicit reference to their being submitted as ‘an appeal’ there is no other construction which can sensibly be placed on them.

Indeed, had the respondent wished to dismiss them on that technical basis it had an obligation under both the rules of fair procedure and common courtesy (in reality, first cousins) to communicate that to the complainant given the significance of what was involved.

It is profoundly unacceptable and unjust to offer the complainant a right of appeal and then refuse to hear it.

This is not a case of an employer being blindsided by some obscure technical breach of the rules of fair procedure which it innocently overlooked. It is rather a case of an employer offering a right of appeal and then blatantly failing to implement it.

In my view, its wide administrative discretion in relation to the ending of the probation is fatally undermined by this omission. It was bound to offer the complainant the opportunity to have her appeal heard by a person other than the original decision maker for no other reason that it had offered to do so. Although in passing, on the basis of the grounds set out in the complainant’s letters of appeal there were other good reasons to do so.

As will be seen from the complainant’s submissions very serious allegation were made about her treatment at the hands of the respondent in relation to her working hours and being required to attend for work when she was clearly medically unfit to do so.

Indeed, while no conclusions can be reached on the basis of the complainant’s response alone, i.e. her appeal material, it provided a robust and substantial response to the case made for terminating her probation which would have given a fair minded appeal hearer much cause for thought. It is hard to see any worse outcome than an extension of the probation.

For all these reasons, I find that the respondent’s actions were procedurally flawed by its failure to honour its offer of an appeal of the decision to the complainant.

My recommendations are below.

Probation, Right of appeal, Fair procedure