{"id":1438,"date":"2025-08-16T03:50:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T03:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/1438\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T03:50:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T03:50:19","slug":"manager-sacked-after-joke-sext-to-colleagues-husband-on-her-phone-gets-reduced-wrc-award-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/1438\/","title":{"rendered":"Manager sacked after \u2018joke\u2019 sext to colleague\u2019s husband on her phone gets reduced WRC award \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tribunal has made a reduced award for losses from unfair dismissal to a manager sacked<\/a> after he admitted taking a colleague\u2019s phone and sending her husband a \u201csexually explicit\u201d text message as \u201ca joke\u201d.<\/p>\n

In an anonymised decision just published, the Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC) upheld a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against the man\u2019s former employer after concluding it was \u201ctoo extreme\u201d to declare that the man\u2019s conduct was \u201cat the high end of sexual harassment\u201d. <\/p>\n

He said he was being made the \u201cfall guy\u201d for a workplace culture of \u201csexual comments and innuendo\u201d at the financial services company as he pleaded to its board to be let keep his \u20ac60,000 a year job, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n

The tribunal heard that in January 2024, the complainant took one of his direct reports\u2019 mobile phones from her desk and sent a \u201csexually explicit WhatsApp message to her husband\u201d, which the other worker, Ms A, found out about as she left to go home.<\/p>\n

The complainant \u201cowned up\u201d and claimed it was \u201cmeant to be a joke\u201d, 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 \u201cvulgar and disgusting\u201d. <\/p>\n

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: \u201cI can\u2019t believe this is happening again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms B later wrote a letter of complaint setting out that she had left a personal device in the company\u2019s finance office when she went on holiday in September 2022 so a colleague could use a banking app installed on it, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n

While she was away, the man had posted \u201ctwo sexually offensive messages\u201d 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 \u201chacked\u201d. <\/p>\n

The complaint letter set out that the complainant \u201cpretended to be serious at first, and then he began laughing and [said] he had posted the messages as a joke\u201d, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n

Michael Kinsley, instructed by Daniel O\u2019Connell of Kean\u2019s Solicitors, for the complainant, <\/p>\n

said the investigation was \u201cbiased and prejudged\u201d and the decision to dismiss \u201cwholly unfair and disproportionate\u201d. <\/p>\n

Adjudication officer Catherine Byrne wrote in her decision: \u201cI do not wish to minimise the impact that the incidents had on the two employees,\u201d 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 \u201cjust kind of got on with things\u201d. <\/p>\n

She considered it reasonable that both women would be angry, embarrassed and shocked at the complainant\u2019s behaviour, and that it amounted to sexual harassment. However, the conclusion reached by the company investigator that it was a \u201chigh severity of sexual harassment\u201d was \u201ctoo extreme\u201d a view, she wrote. <\/p>\n

She considered it unfair that the employer included the 2022 incident with Ms B\u2019s phone in its probe \u201cto bolster a case for the dismissal of the complainant\u201d, having taken no action about it at the time, she wrote. <\/p>\n

Ms Byrne also found there were \u201cserious failings\u201d with the process followed by the employer. <\/p>\n

They \u201cfailed in their duty to properly consider the complainant\u2019s defence\u201d \u2013 having spent at most 20 minutes considering the worker\u2019s position before deciding to dismiss him. <\/p>\n

Ms Byrne upheld the complaint of unfair dismissal and awarded the worker \u20ac22,500 in compensation. <\/p>\n

She wrote that this was 30 per cent of his estimated losses of \u20ac73,500, calculated on the basis that the claimant was out of work six months and was now earning \u20ac314 a week less than he had with his former employer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tribunal has made a reduced award for losses from unfair dismissal to a manager sacked after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,80,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-1438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-work","13":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}