A printer has claimed he lost his job due to "plotting" against him by a group of ex-colleagues from the same Dublin neighbourhood after he called on his bosses to sack one of them for alleged aggression and "ghetto behaviour" at towards him at work.
Declan Walsh (57), who was a litho printer for Poolville Ltd, trading as Labelcraft, has accused the firm of unfair dismissal when he was terminated from his €48,000-a-year job at its print plant in Tallaght, Dublin 24, in September 2024.
His bosses concluded he had made a "false allegation" about his manager looking through his bag - and that confidence and trust had been "irreconcilably broken".
Giving evidence yesterday, the company's financial controller Tony Sullivan said he had just been appointed to investigate a formal grievance raised on 26 August by Mr Walsh against the production manager on the site.
Mr Walsh told the WRC his grievance was that the manager had failed to deal properly with another printer whom he said had been "belligerent" and "aggressive" towards him.
However, Mr Sullivan said the grievance probe was "stood down" before it started when management learned that Mr Walsh had made "comments about [the manager]" in the workplace canteen early in September.
Instead, Mr Sullivan carried out a disciplinary investigation into Mr Walsh. His conclusion was that Mr Walsh "said in the canteen that [the manager] had been through his personal belongings".
When Mr Walsh was dismissed on 30 September 2024 following further disciplinary meetings, the letter recorded that he had "made a false allegation that tried at the very least to undermine your manager", the tribunal heard.
There was dispute over the exact wording of the remark. Mr Walsh said he had said the manager "must have had a sneak peek". Mr Sullivan said a remark by Mr Walsh that "someone grassed him up and that [the manager] had gone through his bag" had been recorded in agreed disciplinary meeting minutes.
Mr Walsh said his manager had "no reason" to be looking behind his machine. He said it would be good practice not to have food or drink in the workshop, but that he had a jar of homemade yoghurt drink in the bag and that [the manager] was trying to "accrue points against me".
He said in his evidence that it "wasn’t quite the case" that there was a breakdown in trust between him and the production manager.
"It was actually the other employees who were plotting against me because of the fact that I was better at my job than they were," he said. "There was collusion going on behind my back," he added.
He told the tribunal that upon joining the firm in 2022, he had advised the former owner of the business to invest in new machines of a type with which he was familiar, but had "difficulties" with one of the other printers, Mr M, when he tried to advise him on running them.
Mr M "was very aggressive towards me on the factory floor", Mr Walsh said of one interaction in late 2023. "He said: 'You think I know nothin'," in a flat Dublin accent, and squared up to me in the factory floor," the complainant added.
Adjudicator Catherine Byrne stopped Mr Walsh at one point when he made a further reference to Mr M's "Dublin accent".
"I’m from Dublin," she said.
Mr Walsh said it was "relevant to someone squaring up to you in a ghetto-type manner".
"I find it offensive," Ms Byrne said.
Cross-examining Mr Walsh, counsel for the employer Frank Drumm BL asked him: "You felt there was a conspiracy against you, they’re all ganging up on you… When did you first begin to feel that?"
Mr Walsh said he had "a pretty big argument" with Mr M in the spring of 2024, and that shortly after that, the roster was changed so that he and Mr M’s shifts would not cross over. He regarded this as unsatisfactory. "I recommended [Mr M's] dismissal," the claimant said.
Mr Walsh's evidence was Mr M had "got the job" through the supervisor at the site "because he’s from Clondalkin as well". Mr M also had a "confidant" - - another long-serving printer from Clondalkin with whom he would get lifts to work from time to time, Mr Walsh said.
"Was there a particular problem with being from Clondalkin?" Mr Drumm asked.
"No, but if you're going to come with a ghetto attitude and square up to me, I’m not taking it," Mr Walsh said. "He’s talking to me as if he's from the ghetto and he's going to do something to me," Mr Walsh said.
He added there were "good people from Clondalkin" and referred to a previous job at a print plant in East Wall working with colleagues "from the toughest part of Sheriff Street who were "working hard" to get away from criminality in their communities.
"If I come off as cocky, it's only because I know what I'm doing. I'm proactive, and I don't like doing sh**ty jobs," Mr Walsh said.
Ms Byrne closed the hearing after hearing Mr Walsh's evidence of financial loss over a three-month period of unemployment following his dismissal. She said she would give her decision "as soon as possible".
