Worker

Employer

Anonymised Parties

Lorry Driver

Logistics Company

Representatives

Jeremy Doyle

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 - 00005763

30/11/2025

This hearing was conducted in person in the Workplace Relations Commission situate in Lansdowne Road, Dublin. In line with the Supreme Court decision in the constitutional case of Zalewski -v- An Adjudication Officer and the Workplace Relations Commission and Ireland and the Attorney General [2021] IESC 24 (delivered on the 6th of April 2021) the hearing was a fair one though it was conducted other than in public as it involved a dispute under the Industrial Relations legislation.

The specific details of the dispute  are outlined in the Workplace Relations Complaint Form which was received by the WRC on the 30th of November 2025.

The Complainant was not represented and made his own case. The Complainant gave his own account of the facts.

In advance of the hearing, I was provided with supplemental documentary evidence in support of the Complainant’s case. No objection was raised to any of the materials relied upon by the Complainant in making his case. The evidence adduced by the Complainant was challenged as appropriate by the Respondent’s Representative.

The Complainant alleges that he was bullied by his line Manager when he sought his correct payment reflecting the large amounts of overtime her has worked.

Where I deemed it necessary, I made my own inquiries so as to better understand the facts of the case and in fulfilment of my duties as prescribed by Statute. 

The Respondent had full legal representation at this hearing. The Respondent entity was also represented by the Managing Director who gave evidence on behalf of the Respondent. The Respondent provided me with some documentary evidence in advance of the hearing and in particular with the Complainant’s payslips. No objection was raised in connection with any of the documentary evidence relied upon by the Respondent in the course of making its case.

The Respondent asserts that the Complainant’s complaint of bullying and harassment was not made known to the Respondent in the course of the employment and that it is consequentially impossible for the Respondent to remedy the situation in the aftermath.

Where I deemed it necessary, I made my own inquiries so as to better understand the facts of the case and in fulfilment of my duties as prescribed by Statute.

I have carefully considered the evidence adduced by both sides at this hearing. The Complainant came to work for the Respondent logistics company in and around April 2025. In the end, the Complainant only worked with the Respondent for about six months as the Complainant left again in October of 2025.

The parties agree that the Complainant was to work a forty-five hour week across five days. The Complainant started work at 7.30 and in theory then his day should have ended at 5.30pm (giving an hour for lunch) The Complainant was being paid minimum wage of €13.50 which meant that the Complainant’s basic salary each week was in the amount of €607.00. On top of this, the Complainant received an extra €20.00 per day subsistence fee.

The Complainant worked many long days and given the nature of the work and the long distances involved the Complainant very often worked overtime. The Complainant put in very long hours.

The Complainant submitted his overtime hours to the bookkeeper/accountant each week and the process was that the Complainant would be paid a week in hand on the next Thursday with any overtime getting paid on the Friday.

The Complainant began to notice that he was not getting paid for all the overtime which he was submitting and despite addressing this matter with the Managing Director on many occasions the Complainant was never fully reconciled for all the hours he said he worked. The Complainant says he worked there for about 28 weeks, and he detailed each week wherein he says he was either paid the correct overtime, some overtime or absolutely no overtime. Some weeks the Complainant worked well over sixty hours (the maximum allowed) and the Complainant described regularly doing eighteen hour days.

Over the course of 28 weeks of employment, I am satisfied that the Complainant was not paid for about 122.5 hours of overtime which averaged out at about 4 hours per week.

The Managing Director gave evidence on behalf of the company. I am not satisfied that the MD ever really appraised himself of what was happening in the course of the employment. He certainly agreed that the Complainant raised the issue of non-payment of overtime on many, many occasions. The Complainant was never given a satisfactory decision as to why he was not getting paid for these extra hours. The Managing Director suggested it might have something to do with the trackers installed on the trucks but could not further elaborate. The MD also said that the Complainant should address the issue with the Complainant’s line Manager.

This said line Manager is the person that the Complainant said bullied him. However, it is clear that the Complainant did not raise a Grievance or other issue concerning the line Manager for the duration of the employment.

It is not wholly surprising that the Complainant eventually opted to cut his losses and look for work elsewhere. He handed in his notice.

There is an obligation on the parties to an IR dispute to demonstrate that they have engaged locally in a good faith process of resolution before presenting any matter to the WRC. The WRC should be seen as the last port of call. Not the first. There is, therefore, an expectation that parties will have exhausted the workplace mechanisms for bringing a grievance or a complaint.

I am of the view that the obligation to address a workplace dispute internally before escalating it to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) is based on several important legal, procedural, and practical reasons.

The contractual relationship between the Employer and the Employee will usually have internal grievance procedures embedded into the contract of employment. The procedures adopted by a workplace are presumed to be optimum for the particular workplace and therefore should be utilised. Resolving a dispute internally saves on time and resources for both the employer and the employee and should reduce the cost of legal representation and administrative overheads. It is hoped that resolving issues in-house helps to maintain ongoing working relationships. Using the internal procedures encourages employer responsibility and accountability in the workplace. The employer is held accountable for maintaining fair procedures, whilst the employee is expected to engage constructively. Grievance procedures and other internal mechanisms thrive on problem-solving and dialogue.

Going through internal steps creates a paper trail of efforts made to resolve the issue and helps the WRC or the Adjudicator to assess the reasonableness of both parties’ actions.

Any subsequent oversight which the WRC may thereafter have, is designed to be complementary to the internal mechanisms and not a substitute for them. The WRC may decline jurisdiction if it is not satisfied that an employee has attempted to resolve issues locally and/or has given no evidence of using the grievance procedure.

I find therefore that I am persuaded by the Respondent’s argument that the Complainant cannot expect the WRC to conduct a full investigation into a bullying complaint which has not been raised and addressed in the workplace.

As Adjudicator I rely relies on an excerpt from ADJ-00030334 A Personal Assistant -v- A Trade Union which noted:

The jurisdiction of an Adjudication Officer under this legislation is somewhat constrained. It is essentially an oversight role to ensure that a worker’s rights have not been breached and to seek to apply equitable (in the colloquial sense) remedies where that will be of assistance to the parties.

The Adjudicator has no role in substituting their decision for that made at the level of the workplace in the absence of some serious error in the processes.

There is no evidence (indeed none was offered) that the respondent failed to follow fair and proper procedures in the course of processing the grievance, only that the procedures applied failed to produce an outcome acceptable to the complainant.