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Irish Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Manager sacked after ‘joke' sext on colleague's phone gets reduced WRC award
A tribunal has made a reduced award for losses from unfair dismissal to a manager sacked after he admitted taking a colleague's phone and sending her husband a 'sexually explicit' text message as 'a joke'. In an anonymised decision just published, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) upheld a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against the man's former employer after concluding it was 'too extreme' to declare that the man's conduct was 'at the high end of sexual harassment'. He said he was being made the 'fall guy' for a workplace culture of 'sexual comments and innuendo' at the financial services company as he pleaded to its board to be let keep his €60,000 a year job, the tribunal heard. The tribunal heard that in January 2024, the complainant took one of his direct reports' mobile phones from her desk and sent a 'sexually explicit WhatsApp message to her husband', which the other worker, Ms A, found out about as she left to go home. READ MORE The complainant 'owned up' and claimed it was 'meant to be a joke', the tribunal noted. Ms A raised it with the CEO of the organisation as soon as he returned from leave, telling him she and her husband considered the message 'vulgar and disgusting'. The text of the message was not included in a WRC decision document published on Friday. The CEO called the claimant to a meeting and suspended him with pay a week after the event, the tribunal heard. The tribunal noted the evidence of the CEO that another senior employee, Ms B, who came to the suspension meeting as a witness, remarked afterwards: 'I can't believe this is happening again.' The CEO told the tribunal he had forgotten about a previous similar incident involving the same manager in September 2022, and told Ms B: 'If we're to do anything about this, I need it documented.' Ms B later wrote a letter of complaint setting out that she had left a personal device in the company's finance office when she went on holiday in September 2022 so a colleague could use a banking app installed on it, the tribunal heard. While she was away, the man had posted 'two sexually offensive messages' on her social media account, the complaint letter stated. Ms B made contact with the manager and told him not to use the banking app, as she feared the phone was 'hacked'. The complaint letter set out that the complainant 'pretended to be serious at first, and then he began laughing and [said] he had posted the messages as a joke', the tribunal heard. Ms B wrote in her complaint letter that she was 'extremely annoyed', but after arranging with the CEO for a dedicated mobile phone for the finance office, took the matter no further. Michael Kinsley BL, appearing instructed by Daniel O'Connell of Kean's Solicitors in the matter, told the Commission the company had failed to examine the position advanced by his client about the 'culture and behaviour of staff in the organisation', which he said had been 'treated dismissively' at all stages. Mr Kinsley said the investigation was 'biased and prejudged' and the decision to dismiss 'wholly unfair and disproportionate'. Lauren Tennyson, for the company, instructed by Sarah Conroy of Beale & Co, said the employer took the view that the external investigator had made 'extremely serious' findings at the 'higher end' of sexual harassment and that the complainant's behaviour 'warranted dismissal for gross misconduct'. Adjudication officer Catherine Byrne wrote in her decision: 'I do not wish to minimise the impact that the incidents had on the two employees,' she wrote. However, she noted that the complainant and Ms B remained friends after the September 2022 incident, while Ms A had stated she had 'just kind of got on with things'. She considered it reasonable that both women would be angry, embarrassed and shocked at the complainant's behaviour, and that it amounted to sexual harassment. However, the conclusion reached by the company investigator that it was a 'high severity of sexual harassment' was 'too extreme' a view, she wrote. She considered it unfair that the employer included the 2022 incident with Ms B's phone in its probe 'to bolster a case for the dismissal of the complainant', having taken no action about it at the time, she wrote. Ms Byrne also found there were 'serious failings' with the process followed by the employer. They 'failed in their duty to properly consider the complainant's defence' – having spent at most 20 minutes considering the worker's position before deciding to dismiss him. Ms Byrne upheld the complaint of unfair dismissal and awarded the worker €22,500 in compensation. She wrote that this was 30 per cent of his estimated losses of €73,500, calculated on the basis that the claimant was out of work six months and was now earning €314 a week less than he had with his former employer.
Times
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
BBC can be ‘unbearable' place to work, chairman warns
The BBC continues to be an 'unbearable' place to work for some staff amid ongoing examples of inappropriate behaviour and abuses of power, its chairman has warned. In his opening statement to the BBC annual report, Samir Shah said the corporation is a 'wonderful place' for the majority of its 21,000 staff but 'there are pockets in the organisation where this is not the case'. Shah said: 'There are still places where powerful individuals — on and off-screen — can abuse that power to make life for their colleagues unbearable.' Shah mentioned the 'shocking revelations' about the disgraced former presenter Huw Edwards, which led to a workplace culture review that found that the BBC had an issue with a minority of 'untouchable' individuals but did not have a toxic culture overall. 'The report emphasised the importance of acting with speed, to be bolder and braver in our actions and to dial up our risk appetite in taking visible steps to stamp out unacceptable and inappropriate behaviours,' he said. On Monday, a report into Gregg Wallace, the MasterChef presenter, substantiated 45 out of 83 allegations against him, including one incident of unwanted physical contact. It was published on the same day as an internal investigation into a BBC documentary about Gaza, which was ruled to have breached editorial guidelines by failing to provide viewers with 'critical information' that its teenage narrator was the son of a Hamas official. Shah said that the film had 'undermined trust' in the BBC and had damaged the corporation's reputation. 'The journalistic impulse to tell such a story was a good one, but trust for our audiences is critical to the BBC. And the Gaza film undermined that trust,' he said. Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, said trust in BBC News had risen year-on-year but warned that this could not be taken for granted amid a wider global crisis of confidence. 'It requires constant diligence and care. And this was a year which saw the reputation of the BBC damaged by serious failings in the making of the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone,' he said. Davie added: 'It was important that the BBC took full responsibility for those failings and apologised for them. The broader context for the BBC is the crisis of trust that is now growing both here and around the world. It is a crisis which I believe risks serious consequences for our society, our economy, and our democratic stability and security.' Presenter pay is another controversial topic for the BBC, which collected £3.8 billion of licence fee income, up £183 million on the previous year as a result of the £10 price increase to £169.50 in April 2024. The top pay table for last year was headed by Gary Lineker and Zoe Ball, both of whom have since left the BBC. Lineker, the former Match of the Day host, stepped down in May after apologising for sharing an antisemitic post on social media. He was paid up to £1.35 million. Ball saw her earnings almost halve to £520,000 for presenting 125 editions of the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show, down from £950,000 for 200 last year. Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer's BBC earnings leapt from £380,000 to £440,000 after his Euro 2024 duties, making him the third highest paid star. Greg James, the Radio 1 presenter, was paid up to £430,000 for hosting 215 breakfast shows. With no major men's football tournament on the BBC this summer, James is expected to become the broadcaster's highest paid star in next year's report.
