A former Iceland shop steward has been awarded €8,300 after the then-owner of its Irish stores, Naeem Maniar, threatened to sue her personally on the eve of a strike.
The award, equivalent to six months' wages for employee Jeanette Joyce, was made by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) in a decision published this morning on foot of her complaint under the Employees (Provision of Information and Consultation) Act 2006 against Metron Stores Ltd, trading as Iceland (in liquidation).
The WRC found that Ms Joyce was penalised in connection with her trade union activity.
Ms Joyce, a mother of two, was working part-time hours on minimum wage when she led a strike in May 2023 at an Iceland supermarket in Coolock, Dublin 17, as an elected shop steward for the Independent Workers’ Union (IWU).
The tribunal ruled that a series of late-night texts from Mr Maniar the night before the industrial action, along with a High Court summons served on Ms Joyce and a later attempt to withhold her wages were intended to "pressurise" her – and had been acts of penalisation for her trade union activity.
On 18 May last year, the day before the planned industrial action at the Coolock store, Mr Maniar came to the shop and spent three hours talking to the shop stewards "to see would we call off the strike", Ms Joyce told the WRC in evidence.
"He wanted to tell us his life story," Ms Joyce said, explaining that Mr Maniar dismissed their complaints about payroll issues and a lack of air conditioning in the store, and embarked on an account of his career in business since the age of seven.
"He felt he was being slandered by the IWU. He went for me, maybe, because I was more outspoken in the shop," she said. "He had planned to sue the IWU, and if they didn’t pay, he was suing me," Ms Joyce said. The businessman’s words to her were: "I will come after your property," she said.
Mr Maniar sent Ms Joyce a series of WhatsApp messages from 6.17pm to around midnight asking her to call off the strike, and later complaining about a social media post by the IWU referring to the dispute.
"How is it fair, Jeanette, to name me personally in circumstances where this can be used to bully my children?" the businessman wrote in the text, which was read into evidence by Ms Joyce.
"What I see is that from the day the announcement was made that Iceland is changing hands, the IWU have circulated attacks, false news and propaganda with the sole aim of recruiting members and collecting money for their personal use with no accountability or transparency.
"I am being used as a football to kick around by certain people in the IWU for their personal agenda," Mr Maniar wrote.
Ms Joyce wrote back the following morning objecting to being contacted so late, stating: "I have never bullied anyone’s children. That is extremely unfair."
In further texts, Mr Maniar wrote: "I was angry that the IWU are playing dirty and seeking to attack me personally." He then apologised, the tribunal heard.
Ms Joyce asked him to take up any issues he had with the IWU’s social media activity directly with the trade union. The strike at the Coolock store went ahead that day, Friday May 19, 2023, the WRC heard.
Ms Joyce said she was approached at work the following Tuesday, May 23, 2023, and handed an envelope containing what she understood to be a High Court plenary summons naming her, two other union reps and the IWU and referring to recovering "aggravated or exemplary damages for unlawful industrial action".
When payday came that Friday, Ms Joyce said, although wages came through for some workers despite a delay explained as a "technical issue", neither she nor the other Coolock shop steward received the bank transfer.
When she sent an email querying the matter with the company’s payroll department, Ms Joyce told the tribunal she received messages back repeatedly insisting the money – a sum of €265.45 net wages -- had been sent.
Having emailed throughout the weekend, even including screenshots of her bank account pointing out that the funds had not arrived, the sender of the emails told her: "Jeanette, I need you to please stop playing games. You’re aware the funds are in your account since Friday," Ms Joyce said, quoting from the correspondence.
The pay only arrived into her bank account two to three weeks later, Ms Joyce said. She later lodged a grievance alleging she had been subjected to "harassment and bullying" by Mr Maniar and that she had been "slandered" in the payroll emails, but nothing came of it before the supermarket went out of business, Ms Joyce added.
"I was just very on edge, waiting for a contract to be cut, hours to be cut -- I felt under the microscope," Ms Joyce said of the weeks following the strike.
The company’s liquidator did not attend the hearing, having written to the WRC stating that it was "not familiar with the background to this complaint and not in a position to assist".
In her decision, WRC adjudicator Elizabeth Spelman wrote that Ms Joyce was "credible in her uncontested evidence" and had given "considerable detail, including dates, names and locations" and a "significant amount of corroborating evidence" in the form of the WhatsApp messages and other correspondence.
Ms Spelman found that Mr Maniar’s "increasingly irate" WhatsApp messages on the eve of the strike were "intended to pressurise [Ms Joyce] and penalise her for her work as shop steward"
The adjudicator said the summons served on Ms Joyce in the days after the strike "was intended to pressurise the complainant by legal means and penalise her for her work as shop steward".
Ms Spelman added that Ms Joyce’s ex-employer "clearly gave her the run-around and sought to withhold her pay" when she inquired about her unpaid wages. The series of emails the worker received were "intended to pressurise the complainant financially", another act of penalisation against her for her role as a shop steward, the adjudicator found.
Upholding the complaint, Ms Spelman ordered the respondent to pay €8,300 as "just and equitable" compensation to Ms Joyce.
Ms Joyce is one of around 35 ex-Iceland staff who had employment rights complaints referred to the WRC by the IWU after the closure of the chain here last autumn.
