A group of workers for a Guinness delivery subcontractor who were fired without notice four years ago over "unscheduled and undocumented" keg deliveries to Dublin pubs have secured awards totaling over €114,000.
They were among 15 drivers and assistants sacked en masse in the wake of a covert surveillance operation by Diageo security officers at a pub in Dublin's north-east inner city between December 2018 and March 2019.
The brewery’s delivery subcontractor, Shannon Warehousing and Transport Ltd, trading as STL Logistics, accused the workers of gross misconduct over what it called "unscheduled and undocumented deliveries of Diageo product" to the pub – 31 kegs on 20 separate occasions.
Brendan McCarthy of Stratis Consulting, a HR expert who appeared for STL Logistics, said it had used "a private company" to interview 70 delivery customers were interviewed, none of whom "justified or clarified why Guinness trucks were stopping at that pub", he said.
At a hearing last year, barrister David Byrnes BL, who was instructed by Setanta Landers to represent 11 of the workers, said: "There is no evidence showing or able to show that any product has gone missing, that any customer was short-changed, or that Diageo is out of pocket."
At hearings throughout last year, the workers gave evidence that they would shuttle kegs between pubs on their routes as a customer service to publicans, who were in the practice of borrowing stock and returning replacement kegs.
"Inside of the company nobody told them to stop doing it. Not only my colleagues but even there are signatures from the agency colleagues. Everybody was doing this practice before us, years before us," one of the sacked workers, Stanislav Gradinaru, told the tribunal.
"At busy times when pubs [are] running low they borrow kegs between places where they have friends or know the manager or whatever. They ask us to drop them back because it’s not a problem for us if we’re not busy," he said.
The tribunal was told that managers who interviewed the workers had looked for specifics the workers could not recall – which the workers’ barrister, Mr Byrnes, argued had been because the practice was so routine.
After a series of investigation meetings and disciplinary hearings, the 11 workers were dismissed in July 2019 – and their appeals were turned down.
Mr Byrnes said his clients had been presented with "hearsay" claims with serious implications during the disciplinary process – but no way to challenge them, as they had not been told that other crews had been unable to recall specifics.
Mr Byrnes said STL could not escape its own duty, as the employer, to inquire into the allegations raised – but that the firm "carried out none of the investigation except the interviews".
"In fact it was Diageo security snooping around carrying out covert surveillance," he added.
"Everyone who knew me over those eleven years comes asking me these days why I’m not working there. I still feel I don’t know why I was dismissed – only because I went [the] extra mile for publicans" Mr Gradinaru said.
"They were not investigating, they [were] prosecuting," Mr Gradinaru said.
The company's position was that after obtaining information from the 70 delivery customers, it was of the view that "no other pub" was involved in swap arrangements.
Mr McCarthy, for the company, argued that the answers given by the delivery crews "lacked any credibility whatsoever" and that trust was "irretrievably broken" – leaving summary dismissal for gross misconduct the "appropriate sanction".
Delivering parallel rulings in the 11 cases, which were published today by the WRC, adjudicating officer Andrew Heavey rejected that view.
Citing the complainant’s evidence on what happened and "the reality surrounding swaps", he was of the view in each case that their actions were not gross misconduct.
"None of these practices were included in the respondent’s disciplinary procedures and are still not included more than three years after the dismissal," Mr Heavey noted.
He said dismissal was not the "proportionate" sanction in the circumstances – noting the petition letter signed by other staff "confirming that swaps take place and have done for many years".
In each case, Mr Heavey said he preferred the evidence of the worker that each of the keg deliveries was part of a swap arrangement in which he was "returning kegs to the pub in question as instructed".
"This in my mind is not a situation where a member of staff deserves summary dismissal for gross misconduct especially where no loss to the company was identified," he wrote.
Mr Heavey upheld complaints by workers Ben Murphy, Mark Bissett, Anthony O’Reilly, Sean F Kelly, Stanislav Gradinaru, Darren Fallon, Krysztof Franczak, John Gray, Lukasz Tymicki, William Dorney and Stephen Nelson against the firm.
Having regard for the degree of financial loss sustained by each of the workers arising from their unfair dismissal he awarded the 11 workers who attended the hearings sums of between €2,320 and €21,000 each as redress under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977.
Earlier this year, their colleague, shop steward Sean Corcoran, whose claim was pursued by his trade union, Siptu, also secured orders for €5,200 for unfair dismissal and a further €2,720 in notice pay against the company.
The total compensation orders against the firm under the Unfair Dismissal Act in the twelve cases was €114,240.
Two other former workers who lodged claims against STL Logistics, but did not appear to progress them on their hearing dates, had their complaints against the firm dismissed.
