Builder who called his boss a ‘sneaky rat' wins €9k for unfair dismissal
'He lost it again and said: 'Go home and don't come back in Monday,' so I tipped up the material and went home,' David Donohoe said.
A builder fired after calling his employer a 'sneaky rat' in a row on-site has won €9,000 for unfair dismissal.
David Donohoe secured the award under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 on foot of a complaint against SJK Civils Ltd, where he had worked for 13 years until he was sacked in April 2024.
Mr Donohoe told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) at a hearing in January that he was sacked on the spot from the €50,000-a-year job when he got into a dispute with his employer about working hours on Friday, April 5, 2024.
The complainant said he had been told to start work at 5.30am that day, an hour and a half earlier than his usual 7am, and to go to Dublin, collect building materials and bring them to a site.
He said that when he arrived with the material, he was told that despite the early start, he was expected to work until his usual finishing time of 3pm rather than 1.30pm.
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He declined to do so, upon which his employer 'started giving out', he said.
'I called him a sneaky rat, that he had it all planned,' Mr Donohoe said in his evidence.
'He lost it again and said: 'Go home and don't come back in Monday,' so I tipped up the material and went home,' Mr Donohoe said.
The company's director, who was not identified in the decision, maintained that Mr Donohoe had only been sent away from the site on April 5, 2024, but was not dismissed from his employment until April 19.
He said that after Mr Donohoe wrote to him looking for a letter for the social welfare office to say he 'was sacked or whatever', he tried to arrange a meeting and called him to a 'capability hearing'.
When Mr Donohoe failed to attend, the director wrote to him again and told him his failure to attend the meeting was 'failure to follow a reasonable management instruction' and that his job was being terminated for 'gross misconduct' during the April 5 incident.
Mr Donohoe's solicitor, Frank Taaffe, argued the letters sent by the firm to his client were only 'seeking to mend the respondent's hand' by 'retrospectively applying a dismissal process after the fact of dismissal'.
Adjudication officer Anne McElduff wrote that both parties 'contributed to the escalation of matters to the point of dismissal' and that it was 'regrettable' there was no attempt to enter into dialogue after that.
Ms McElduff's view was that Mr Donohoe should have engaged when there were attempts to launch a formal process.
However, she said the company failed to refer him to the correct company policy and set an 'unreasonably short and unfair' deadline to either attend a hearing or have non-attendance be added to the charges against him.
The only option for appeal was to the company director, who had been directly involved with the incident of 5 April, she added.
'I consider the respondent has not discharged the burden of demonstrating the Complainant's dismissal was fair, reasonable or proportionate or that the process was conducted in accordance with fair procedures,' she wrote.
Mr Donohoe had claimed losses of €15,977 between April and August 2024, at which point he went into business for himself, the adjudicator noted.
Ms McElduff decided €9,000 was 'just and equitable in all the circumstances' and directed SJK Civils to pay Mr Donohoe that sum.
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