WRC award €120,000 to Account Manager
An Account Manager working for an International Firm was recently awarded €120k after being made redundant without warning, during a Microsoft Teams meeting. This is equal to one year’s pay, as he was on €120k with the company.
The manager successfully took a claim for Unfair Dismissal by Redundancy, after being let go on a remote team meeting titled ‘Ireland Team Meeting’.Though the manager had worked for the firm for approximately 16 years, he was given no explanation for his redundancy and was not allowed to ask for more details or give any constructive response to the news at the meeting.
He was paid redundancy of €19,152, which was taken into account when awarding the six-figure sum.
While the firm had made an announcement that its Irish operations were closing, they failed to take into account that the manager was fluent in Spanish and Italian, and failed to discuss an alternative role, which he may have been qualified for.
He was on unemployment for 54 weeks, before securing a new job on a salary of €60,000, half his original salary.
The company was unable to provide any evidence or submit any representation on their behalf to support their decision or demonstrate the procedures they applied when choosing the manager for dismissal on the grounds of redundancy.
While this case involves a multi-national company, the law applies equally to all employers.
Multi-national companies with deep pockets can survive a large claim like this, brought on by their own arrogance and disrespect towards employees.
For small businesses, this could cripple their finances and even drive them to bankruptcy if proper procedures are not in place and followed to the letter. If you do not have a documented procedure in place in your company for the possible event that you need to make employees redundant in the future, you are at a very serious risk of this happening to you.
Contact us today to begin the steps towards protecting you, and your company, as this is a situation that has to be very carefully prepared for, documented, and communicated to avoid a fallout in your direction.
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