Are employees too well protected in Ireland?

Overheal wrote: »

I did, they admitted defrauding the company on a systematic basis. The ruling baffles me. Is there some sort of ritual employers have to perform in order to fire someone?

Yes. Due process. You seem to have missed

In a determination yesterday, the tribunal noted that the three men "accepted in their evidence that they had defrauded" the company on an "ongoing basis".
"It was also noted by the tribunal that this was a custom and practice that was both known and accepted by the management" of the company over a long period of time.

If such a thing was to be deemed no longer acceptable, then the fair course is to announce that they're no longer acceptable.

Overature wrote: »

I think they are way too protected, the unions have way to much control over the employers. As soon as you hear about jobs being cut there is always some over paid muppet from the unions saying how they are having talks and the likes.

Unions in Ireland are weak, when's the last time you saw a full strike?
Unions need to be stronger, not weaker.
Leadership out of touch and wasting members money on expensive hotel banquets, strike pay funds dangerously low and too much fighting with others can crying foul about "poaching"
But all that can be improved on

The largest march in the last decade was Irish Ferries, different estimates around but a common one was 100,000 for the Dublin march
And it was a failure, SIPTU the largest union in Ireland got out maneuvered and agreed to two tiers of conditions, one for current workers and slave wages for the new staff

You saw GAMA
We have a recent thread on abuses in the hotel industry, it's a lot worse then what goes on in retail.
Minimum rest periods between shifts? Lol, you finish at four am and you're back for breakfast shift or don't bother coming back at all.

The muppets you see on TV are trying to get the best deal for their members. Profitable companies are leaving Ireland, get the government to pay over half the statutory redundancy up to last year and of course, never forgetting to waste a good recession.
Talk Talk in Waterford

If I had my own large buissness I would want to be able to pick and choose who I paid to do the work, wouldn't be having any unions telling me how to run my company

Nobody is saying you can't do that, unions don't hold the job interviews and make the decisions.
And if you want to let someone go you do this easily within twelve months of the start date. But procedures are there to be followed and if HR and management can't do it then they learn an expensive lesson


The IBEC press releases must be getting through to a lot of boards posters.
They're as much a lobby group with an agenda as any union

Lumbo wrote: »

It also pointed out he was not informed that an initial meeting with the store manager was in fact an inquiry.

Maybe if the HR staff in Tesco's did their job properly the EAT wouldn't have to deal with these type of situations.

That type of thing was common practice amongst management when I worked in one of their stores as a teenager. They would pull you up to the office and issue you a warning over being 1 minute late, for failing to empty the bailer after use (if it was full at the time, or not), for failing to stack an aisle manager A had told you to (because you are stacking a different aisle manager B had told you to first, and neither would take 'no/after this aisle' for an answer), etc, etc. All of these and others happened to friends of mine or myself (I was one minute late, and it was my first time being late at this).

Thankfully, it was also common practice for us to go through the whole process up until the point of having to sign in agreement, getting our hands physically on the warning... then asking for our union rep (located in the same site) and watching our department manager's face turn pale ! That meeting would end there-and-then, unless we insisted on it - and got to see our manager recieve an almighty b*****king over it by said rep!

Warnings for legit reasons, they would call people up to the office on with the union rep already there. If there was no union rep present, that was how you knew they were trying to pull a fast one on you.

---

Added to that, after the economy went splat I had to take a job in a well-known petrol station chain who do not have a union. The floor/till staff were paid €8.65/hr, and the deli staff €9.85. After a few months, they started to try to get the (already overworked) floor staff to work on the deli from 3pm-9pm without getting the additional €1.30/hr. They claimed this was due to being stuck for money in the economic climate (funny enough, the idea came through about a week after they splashed six-figures on Croker corporate tickets for rugby/football/GAA - I knew this because a friend worked in head office).

So anyway, the site shut at 11pm and you were paid until 11pm, but would typically be stuck in doing cleaning and stuff until 11.20 or 11.30 (unpaid, and most likely uninsured) or your hours would be cut down to one or no shifts for a while. So this would have likely meant not getting out until near midnight. Added to that, we were already cleaning the deli at night uninsured as our contracts explicitly stated we were not allowed behind the counter - but refusal to do so would again mean no shifts for a while. One of the girls working there slipped and broke her leg in there after I had left, and they refused to pay compensation or even leave for this very reason (and also because there were no cameras behind the deli counter).

Everybody was annoyed by this, but most were Polish and Estonian immigrants and so losing their job in that climate was simply not an option - so I was the only one willing to follow through on the matter in refusing to do so unless we were to be paid the same rate as the deli staff were on. I was then told by the area manager, sneeringly and with a mocking chuckle, to do it or get fired. A few days later I got free legal aid to assist over this and regurgitated what they told me a few days later to him. We never heard another word on the matter, and the whole idea was scrapped altogether.

Moral of the story: if companies didn't try to exploit their workers and pull this type of stuff all the time, the need for such protections would not be there and most of these unions/proceedures would have never existed in the first place. They brought it on themselves.

Motorist wrote: »

I genuinely imagine there are lots of technicalities where the above employee could still get a 20,000 award such as wrong terminology being used during the meeting informing them they were fired, some of their "rights" being trampled on or if they offered the explanation that they simply forgot to pay.

Seems to be a minefield for employers. Getting stuck with some useless, incompetent employee as is the case in every small workplace in Ireland would certainly put me off ever owning my own business.

Well at least you know before you start.

I employed people for 15 years. Never again.

30% trying, and good at their job. 30% trying but hopelessly inadequate, 30% don't give a st1t, and 10% thieves, dishonest, etc.

I did a business college dip by night to try to help the business succeed, at a cost of 18 grand, where all the class were small to medium sized business managers. Anyone who had been to the labour court said the same thing : Prepare to bend over. The employer almost never wins. The only reason to hire legal advice is to limit the amount of the payout.

Great country for small business my hole.

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yes they bloody well are.

token101 wrote: »

I read it twice just to make sure I had it right and hadn't missed some key point.

"In a determination yesterday, the tribunal noted that the three men "accepted in their evidence that they had defrauded" the company on an "ongoing basis"."

Yet they are still entitled to compensation? What a load of s**t. They should have been sued by the company for fraud if anything! So it's ok to come into work, do nothing, sleep on the job just because no one tells you that sleeping in work isn't ok? Absolute nonsense.

I direct you to this
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=76693007&postcount=39

Corruptedmorals wrote: »

Stealing from your store comes under gross misonduct, instant dismassal, no warning stages. A girl I used to work with was fired for the same reason. The problem with the story in the OP is not that Tesco screwed up and didn't follow procedure- it's the fact that the employee used discrimination as his defence-and won.

+1. Always the case anywhere I've worked, at any rate.

Corruptedmorals wrote: »

Stealing from your store comes under gross misonduct, instant dismassal, no warning stages. A girl I used to work with was fired for the same reason. The problem with the story in the OP is not that Tesco screwed up and didn't follow procedure- it's the fact that the employee used discrimination as his defence-and won.

Where does it say that he won on discrimination? The article does say that the employee was never informed the meeting in which he was fired was an inquiry. This points to failure of company to follow company procedure. I would be surprised at any large company that has on the spot firing as company policy. Usually suspension with pay for gross misconduct while am investigation is caried out. Employee would be formally invited to meeting. If company policy is followed and there has been gross misconduct then the firring would be valid.

Well yes, that's why I put in suspend

You suspend the employee with full pay, escort them off the premises, have an investigation and bring them back for a meeting in a few days

Yeah sorry, wasn't clear