Worker

Employer

Anonymised Parties

A Clerical Worker

A Health Service Provider

Representatives

Act

Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 13 of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969

IR - SC - 00004968

20/08/2025

The Worker is an administrator who was promoted to a higher grade and was placed on a panel. He applied to a role in a specialist advisory unit of the Employer, from that panel, on the basis of a receptionist job description. The Worker later discovered that he was not being assigned that role and it was being carried out by a General Operative and he was being given other work.

The Worker has been a long-standing employee of the Employer. He was placed on a Grade Four panel after successfully applying for the promotion. As he placed highly, he had a degree of choice in where he went and when he saw that the specialist advisory unit was offering a receptionist position he applied for it. This position stressed no blending working on the basis that the role was as an on-site receptionist.

When the Worker took up the role he found out that he was not going to be working as the receptionist and would instead be employed carrying out administrative duties while covering the receptionist breaks. He could have accepted a different post if he was told that the role was not actually available. He tried to get another role but the Employer then put in place a wider recruitment freeze which limited his options.

After raising the matter informally he raised it formally through stage 1 of the grievance process. When he wasn’t happy with the response and outcome he raised the matter with a senior official at Stage 2, who then told him he couldn’t meet with him as he was retiring. That official referred the Stage 2 to a different official who never got in touch. He emailed the retired official’s replacement who failed to move the issue forward so he referred the dispute to the WRC.

The employment relationship was based on a lie and he has suffered because of this.

The Employer accepts that they initially offered the role as a receptionist post but things change and the Worker was assigned other duties entirely in line with his responsibilities as a Grade Four and which provide progression opportunities.

The Employer believes that the Worker was told that he had to contact the assigned official to progress his stage 2 but he has not done so.

The Worker is seeking reassignment but they don’t have the authority to reassign him outside of their unit which is small. He can apply for other roles within the organisation. There is no set internal mobility/transfer scheme.

They will reassign the Worker to the receptionist post if that resolves the matter. They can potentially secure him a job elsewhere in the service if that is his goal but it is not a guaranteed option and they cannot provide him an al-a-carte menu of alternative roles.

In conducting my investigation, I have taken into account all relevant submissions presented to me by the parties.

The Worker was a Grade Three Clerical Officer but applied and was granted a promotion to Grade Four and sits towards the top of that scale earning over €50,000 a year. While a Grade Four could be a receptionist, the Worker is paid on the basis of a much wider potential scope of duties associated with his grade. It follows that it is at the discretion of the Employer to assign him to any of those duties or there would be no basis to pay him anything more than the going rate for a receptionist.  

While the Employer’s discretion can be limited by demarcation agreements or grade profiles in this case no such restriction exists and the Worker’s duties are well within the scope of his grade.

The Employer accepts that the Worker accepted the post on the basis of a job spec which suggested he was going to work as a receptionist. While he does cover reception breaks he is mostly assigned other work collating compliance data from hospitals. The Worker is correct in that his being offered one job and assigned another was not best practice but I cannot see that conclusion forming the basis for any reasonable recommended course of action. The Worker has not actually identified any detriment which arose from him applying for the receptionist role but being assigned other work. He does not allege that it adversely impacted his career in any way. While he has pointed to the lack of blending working available to him it is not clear if he wants blending working and applied to the role with the knowledge it would not be available. Flexitime is not offered to anyone in the advisory unit. The Employer has now offered him the receptionist role but it is not clear that he wants it anymore. He submits he has suffered but does not identify how. There is no reasonable basis to recommend compensation.

There is one aspect in which the Employer’s reaction was unsatisfactory. They determined that they should cease engaging with the Worker on these issues once he made a referral to the WRC pending this hearing. That approach is not in the interest of good industrial relations and was not appropriate, particularly in the circumstances of a dispute under this act.

However, on the basis of the dispute that was referred to me, I do not see how I can recommend that the Employer take any specific measure.

I note that in the course of the hearing that the Employer was willing to put a number of solutions on the table and I recommend that the parties explore this further to see if there is any option that both parties might find agreeable. If the parties believe it is appropriate it may be useful to appoint an internal or external person as mediator, but I will not make any recommendation on that specific option.