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Latest in Employment Law>Case Law>Dundalk Town Council v Teather [2011]
Dundalk Town Council v Teather [2011]
Published on: 04/11/2011
Issues Covered: Discrimination Pay
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Background

The claimant in this case was a retained (i.e. part-time) firefighter who had attained the grade of Sub Officer at the time of his complaint. Within the fire service, where a full time Sub Officer or more senior Officer is not available at the time of an incident, a practice has developed of designating a full time firefighter who has not yet attained the rank of Sub Officer to ‘act up’ as the Officer-in-Charge, even where a part-time Sub Officer is in attendance. 

The claimant alleged that this practice amounts to less favourable treatment on grounds of part-time status and that where a Full Time Sub or more senior Officer is not available, he should assume the role of Officer-in-Charge. An RC found that this complaint was justified and that the respondent was in breach of the 2001 Act. This decision was appealed to the Labour Court.

A number of arguments were raised by the respondent on appeal. The most salient of these were:

1. That full-time firefighters are not comparable full–time employees in that they perform a significantly wider range of duties than the claimant

2. That full-time firefighters are not employed on the same type of contract as the claimant

3. That the designation of a firefighter as Officer-in-Charge relates to a question of status and is not a ‘condition of employment’ within the terms of the legislation

4. That any alleged difference in treatment is objectively justified under the terms of the Act

The Labour Court's Findings:

1. Under this heading, the Court summarised that the essential difference in duties concerned the full-time firefighters liability to carry out a range of administrative and ancillary functions whereas a part-time (or retained) firefighter was almost exclusively engaged in fire fighting and associated work. 

The Court noted that the facts of this case were strikingly similar to that Matthews v Kent and Midway Town Fire Authority [2006] IRLR 367, where the House of Lords in the UK held that in approaching the question of like work, the similarities of the work performed by claimants and comparators should be concentrated upon rather than the differences. Using this guidance, the Court concluded that the core duties of all firefighters is to fight fires and deal with other emergencies and that full time firefighters perform additional functions precisely because they work full time and must be occupied when there are no fires to be fought. 

If these additional functions were to be accepted as preventing a finding of like work, the protection offered by the Act (and the EU directive upon which it is based) would be undermined.

2. Under this heading, the Court noted that the Irish act does not specify that the claimant and his/her comparator must be employed on the same type of contract and that the Court was being asked to import such a requirement into Section 7 (2) by virtue of the wording set out in the directive. 

The Court concluded that the reference in the directive to the same type of contract or employment relationship cannot be interpreted as meaning that a contract of employment for full- time work is different to a contract of employment for part-time work, as this would defeat the very purpose of the legislation – to allow a comparison to be made between the two in terms of treatment. 

In any case, the Court added that it was not aware of any European case law that allowed a defendant to rely upon a provision in a directive to defeat a claim based on a more favourable provision of national law.

3. Under this heading, the Court noted that the term ‘conditions of employment’ includes conditions in respect of remuneration and pension matters but it found that this definition is clearly not exhaustive and may include other matters. 

The Court suggested that there may be cases where a distinction should be drawn between conditions of employment on the one hand and the duties of an employment on the other. However, the uncontested evidence from the claimant in this case was that the right to take charge at incidents is regarded as a benefit of a higher rank rather than a burden. 

The Court also noted that although the claimant did not have a written contract of employment, an identical colleague was furnished with a written contract with a term that required taking charge of operations at fires and other incidents. On this basis, the term must be regarded as a condition of employment.

4. Under this heading, the Court noted that the arguments advanced by the respondent related to the availability of the claimant to act as Officer-in-Charge or amounted to general assertions regarding the desirability of full time personnel being assigned to perform command duties. 

It concluded that there was no basis upon which a defence of objective justification could succeed in this case.

Accordingly, the decision of the RC was upheld.

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Disclaimer The information in this article is provided as part of Legal Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article. This article is correct at 04/11/2011
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