The Complainant’s employer appealed the Decision of the Adjudication Officer to the Labour Court after the Adjudication Officer found that the Complainant was unfairly constructively dismissed and awarded the Complainant compensation in the sum of €13,300.

The Complainant commenced employment in the Solicitors’ practice on the 3rd of November 2008. On the 29th of November 2018, the Respondent became her new employer under a Transfer of Undertakings. Following on from the transfer, the Respondent made unilateral changes to her contract and failed to pay her fees on time in respect of her practice certificate. The Complainant raised a formal grievance about this issue. At their first meeting, the Respondent offered her a severance package with conditions attached that she could not agree to. The Complainant felt her concerns were not being addressed and as a result she felt like she had no other option but to resign.  On the 26th of March 2019, she handed in her resignation.

The Complainant gave evidence in respect of other issues that arose with the Respondent including the redirecting of a client who had requested to speak to her, where the Respondent advised that no body of that name worked in the practice. The failure of the Respondent to include her details on the website and receipt of a text message from the Respondent looking to know where she was when she was two minutes late for work. The Complainant stated that she tried to resolve these issues with the Respondent without success, so she raised a formal grievance. However, at that meeting Mr Mc Laughlin refused to address her outstanding grievances on the basis that he felt they had been resolved at the previous meeting.

It is the Respondent’s submission that the issues raised by the Complainant were addressed in a timely matter and in line with their grievance procedures. The Respondent claimed that if the Complainant was unhappy with the outcome of the grievance procedure, she could have appealed the decision, however she did not avail of this option. The Respondent submitted that they had a number of issues with the Complainant’s work practices which they had sought to resolve with her but that she had not engaged proactively on these issues.

The net issue for consideration for the Labour Court was whether the Complainant’s employment came to an end in circumstances of dismissal within the meaning of the statutory definition of that term. The Court found that the unilateral changes to the contract constituted a significant breach of the employment contract and that it could realistically be said that the Respondent was guilty of conduct in relation to the Complainant which was such as to entitle her to terminate her employment. Accordingly, the Court that the Complainant’s employment did come to an end by dismissal. The Court determined that the Complainant was entitled to compensation in the sum of €5,641.8 and rejected the appeal.
https://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/cases/2021/february/udd2110.html