Month: October 2019

  • The Use of Private Investigators By Employers-Caution Needed

    Have you been tempted to engage the services of a private investigator to carry out surveillance on one of your employees? Perhaps you are trying to gather evidence of breach of a restrictive covenant in the contract of employment?  Or maybe you want to ascertain if an employee is working somewhere else or carrying on…

  • The Cost Effectiveness of Bringing Certain WRC Claims

    I took a quick look through the latest decisions from the WRC this morning. There is a facility on the WorkplaceRelations.ie website which allows you to see the latest decisions and the week in question is from the 23rd September 2019 to 29th September 2019. I only glanced at about 5 decisions but of those…

  • Is the WRC (Workplace Relations Commission) Biased Towards Employers?

    Many visitors to my Facebook page about employment rights in Ireland have a dim view of the WRC (Workplace Relations Commission). Some of these disappointed complainants believe the WRC is useless and in favour of employers. On this post, for example, you will see comments such as ‘WRC is crap of employers’ weapons’,  ‘A complete…

  • Catering Assistant Awarded €30,000 for Sexual Harassment

    The WRC have awarded €30,000 to our client arising from a claim of sexual harassment in the workplace. The claim was brought under the Employment Equality Act 1998 and in a comprehensive 20 page decision the WRC Adjudicator awarded her €30,000, not subject to any statutory deductions, which was the equivalent of 18 months’ wages.…

  • Indirect Discrimination Award of €38,000 Where Part Time Employee Required to Work Full Time

    A WRC decision of August 2019 deals with a case where the part time worker was required to move to full time work. It is an instructive case when you want to understand indirect discrimination. Indirect discrimination is different from direct discrimination and is defined as: (a) Indirect discrimination occurs where an apparently neutral provision…