An employer has found an award of €42,500 made against them as the tribunal felt that they held a predetermined view that an employee had been guilty of gross misconduct and as such had fallen a long way short of showing that there had been a fair dismissal.
In the case of Flaherty -v- Abbott Ireland UD1764/2010 the employee was dismissed for "industrial espionage" by falsely manufacturing a set of data, as she worked in an IT role for a medical devices Company who were launching a new QS system.
The employee was part of the quality assurance section testing units (each of which costs €1500) and carrying out reliability and tolerance tests on the units. Two records were created for one unit using the employees login and no reason was found for this, and when the employee noticed that there were data issue with the system she raised this with her Line Manager who felt the employee had falsely manufactured test data and was guilty of Gross Misconduct. It was cited as a falsification of records by the employee.
The Employer asked the employee numerous times for a reason why this happened however they were unable to find any reason for this, other than a falsification of records. The employee argued that they did not have enough training to deliberately do this, nor the expertise to know how to do this.
The tribunal was highly critical of the employer in this case as they felt that the employers assertion that it must be the employees fault as the Computer system is infallible and could not err. the Tribunal said that the "Computer systems can have teething problems and fail" and also that there was a "training deficit"
Where there is a serious criticism of the employer is where the tribunal also noted that the employer had a "predetermined view" that the employee was guilty of gross misconduct and that findings for the employee were ignored in the appeal.
The Tribunal awarded €42,500 against the employer, which is reason enough to ensure that when carrying out any disciplinary hearings etc. an employer bases any decision solely on the evidence in front of them and not on a predetermined view that an employee is guilty, they must ensure that the entire process is transparent and not a sham process.
