A tyre fitter who said he was "verbally attacked" by his boss when he refused to work an on-call shift after months of "excessive" hours has won nearly €11,000 for multiple working hours and employment law breaches.
The Workplace Relations Commission made the orders on foot of complaints by Odhran Dooley, who said he was let go after he told his ex-employer, Midland Tyre Services Ltd, that he didn't want to work on call for a second weekend on in a row.
He told the tribunal in evidence that it was the first time he had complained about a schedule of "excessive" hours which he said had him working between 51 and 79 hours a week and had left him "exhausted".
His former employer said Mr Dooley was "technically competent" but that his "attitude" and "refusal to work on-call" meant it had to end his probation.
At a WRC hearing earlier this year, the company’s operations director, Chris Parle, said that when he asked Mr Dooley to go on call for the weekend of 3 February 2022, he "was not aware" that the complainant was on call the weekend before.
Mr Parle said there was a "heated exchange" after Mr Dooley refused because the firm had already been "let down" by the tyre fitter originally rostered for that weekend’s on-call duty, but denied that he "verbally attacked" Mr Dooley.
He said he told Mr Dooley the following day that being on call was "part of his role" and if he wasn’t prepared to do it, the job "wasn’t for him".
Mr Dooley then looked for more money to work the on-call hours, Mr Parle said.
The complainant said he had been told his base pay would go up from €545.45 gross to €750 a week when he was assigned to a breakdown van – but told the tribunal there was no increase when he switched apart from getting a flat rate of €20 per on-call shift and €10 per hour called out.
He said he agreed to a shift pattern of working 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday, working on call each Tuesday night and every fifth weekend.
Mr Dooley said that over the 22 weeks he was employed, the firm required him to work on call a second night in the week on four or five occasions, and on two weekends in a row in January 2022.
He said he would typically get a call out to repair a tyre "at or shortly after" 6pm and would not get home until 11pm – sometimes getting as little as three hours’ sleep before being called out again in the early hours of the morning.
He would then report to work at 8am the morning after and work the full day "as normal".
The work he was doing, repairing and replacing lorry tyres at the roadside, was "physically demanding and dangerous work" – and often demanded a drive of an hour or an hour and a half to get to the scene and the same drive back home.
The director said Mr Dooley was "technically competent" but did not pass his probation because of his "attitude" and "refusal to work on call".
He added that the established "custom and practice" in the firm was to allow staff start work late the following morning if they had a "difficult night" on call – something Mr Dooley said he was never told about.
In her decision, adjudicating officer Bríd Deering quoted case law referring to working hours beyond the legal maximum as a potential health and safety risk.
She found that in a reference period between September and December 2021, Mr Dooley had worked overtime of between seven and 39 hours per week – an average of 20.2.
Midland Tyre Services was therefore in breach of Section 15 of the Organisation of Working Time Act for permitting Mr Dooley to work an average of 48 hours per week over four months, she wrote.
"In determining the appropriate amount of compensation I have had regard to the physically demanding and often dangerous nature of the work performed by the complainant," she wrote, awarding compensation of €5,000 for one breach of the working hours legislation.
Accepting Mr Dooley's evidence that he was never told about the "custom and practice" of starting later after a busy night on call, she awarded €3,500 for failing to provide rest periods.
A further €300 was awarded for the firm’s failure to provide more than 24 hours’ notice of extra on-call hours and €1,090 for each of two breaches of the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act over the failure to provide contractual statements in writing.
The total compensation orders against the firm were €10,980.
