The Complainant in this case was appointed in March 2008. Some years later, he found that other technicians were appointed to a higher starting point and received retrospection back to when they started. He raised the issue as a grievance and in 2018, management agreed to pay him another increment but with six months retrospection, which he rejected.

In 2019, the Complainant referred a complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission under the Payment of Wages Act where the Adjudication Officer decided that that the Complainant ‘was in receipt of the remuneration properly payable to him and consequently no unlawful deduction was made from his salary’. The Complainant then referred a dispute to the WRC under the Industrial Relations Act,1969.

The Respondent applied the terms of circular 13/2006 to the Complainant on his appointment – which provides at Section 3 for incremental credit which may be awarded for professional experience -a factor which the Respondent maintained was never cited by the Complainant in his application or since his appointment. The Respondent contended that the Complainant was seeking to rely on an earlier circular which applied to DIT, although this was never produced by the Complainant but instead a VEC Circular dated 1980 was produced. On the comparators provided by the Complainant, all but one of those who received retrospection did so based on their professional and not educational qualifications. Only one person cited as a comparator received credit based on educational qualifications and without any retrospection.

The Court noted that there were two issues to be considered which would decide whether the employee should receive further retrospection in addition to the six months proposed by the employer. The two grounds are the application or otherwise of the DIT agreement and even it was found that the terms of that agreement were  superseded by the terms of the circular 13/2006, whether the employee was treated less favourably than other employees irrespective of which circular was applied.

Relating to the first ground the Court noted that regarding the application of the DIT circular, what was being suggested by the union is that the terms of that agreement remained in place post the circular of 2006. The circular of 2006  makes no reference to additional increments for educational qualifications (unlike the 1980 Circular) and it is not unreasonable to suggest that by 2006 the basic requirement of qualifications was being standardised, and at a higher level than before.  The Court stated that the argument that the DIT Agreement or 1980 Circular ought to have applied to the employee at the time of his appointment in 2008 and that he should have been offered an additional  increment on appointment based on that agreement is not accepted.

Regarding the second ground the Court opined that there was nothing in the documentation provided by the Complainant which suggests that with one exception the advancement agreed to the second point of the scale was on grounds of educational qualifications. In that one case the female comparator  did not receive any retrospection at all unlike the employee in this case who was offered six months retrospection.

Therefore the Court recommended that the employee accept the payment of the six months retrospection offered by the Respondent together with being moved to the second point of the scale in settlement of his dispute regarding incremental credit.
https://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/cases/2021/march/adj-00028675.html