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Ireland\u2019s record tax take makes light of Trump tariffs fear<\/p>\nA printer has claimed he lost his job due to \u201cplotting\u201d against him by a group of ex-colleagues from the same Dublin neighbourhood after he called on his bosses to sack one of them for alleged aggression and \u201cghetto behaviour\u201d towards him at work. <\/p>\n
Declan Walsh (57), who was a litho printer for Poolville Ltd, trading as Labelcraft, has accused the firm of unfair dismissal when he was terminated from his \u20ac48,000-a-year job at its print plant in Tallaght, Dublin 24, in September 2024. <\/p>\n
His bosses concluded he had made a \u201cfalse allegation\u201d about his manager looking through his bag \u2013 and that confidence and trust had been \u201cirreconcilably broken\u201d. <\/p>\n
Giving evidence on Monday at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), the company\u2019s financial controller Tony Sullivan said he had just been appointed to investigate a formal grievance raised on 26th August by Mr Walsh against the production manager on the site. <\/p>\n
Mr Walsh told the WRC his grievance was that the manager had failed to deal properly with another printer whom he said had been \u201cbelligerent\u201d and \u201caggressive\u201d towards him. <\/p>\n
However, Mr Sullivan said the grievance probe was \u201cstood down\u201d before it started when management learned that Mr Walsh had made \u201ccomments about [the manager]\u201d in the workplace canteen early in September. <\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s record tax take makes light of Trump tariffs fear<\/p>\n
Instead, Mr Sullivan carried out a disciplinary investigation into Mr Walsh. His conclusion was that Mr Walsh \u201csaid in the canteen that [the manager] had been through his personal belongings\u201d. <\/p>\n
When Mr Walsh was dismissed on 30 September 2024 following further disciplinary meetings, the letter recorded that he had \u201cmade a false allegation that tried at the very least to undermine your manager\u201d, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n
There was dispute over the exact wording of the remark. Mr Walsh said he had said the manager \u201cmust have had a sneak peek\u201d. Mr Sullivan said a remark by Mr Walsh that \u201csomeone grassed him up and that [the manager] had gone through his bag\u201d had been recorded in agreed disciplinary meeting minutes. <\/p>\n
Mr Walsh said his manager had \u201cno reason\u201d to be looking behind his machine. He said it would be good practice not to have food or drink in the workshop, but that he had a jar of home-made yoghurt drink in the bag and that [the manager] was trying to \u201caccrue points against me\u201d. <\/p>\n
He said in his evidence that it \u201cwasn\u2019t quite the case\u201d that there was a breakdown in trust between him and the production manager. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was actually the other employees who were plotting against me because of the fact that I was better at my job than they were,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was collusion going on behind my back,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
He told the tribunal that upon joining the firm in 2022, he had advised the former owner of the business to invest in new machines of a type with which he was familiar, but had \u201cdifficulties\u201d with one of the other printers, Mr M, when he tried to advise him on running them. <\/p>\n
Mr M \u201cwas very aggressive towards me on the factory floor\u201d, Mr Walsh said of one interaction in late 2023. \u201cHe said: \u2018You think I know nothin\u2019,\u201d in a flat Dublin accent, and squared up to me in the factory floor,\u201d the complainant added. <\/p>\n
Adjudicator Catherine Byrne stopped Mr Walsh at one point when he made a further reference to Mr M\u2019s \u201cDublin accent\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m from Dublin,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Mr Walsh said it was \u201crelevant to someone squaring up to you in a ghetto-type manner\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI find it offensive,\u201d Ms Byrne said.<\/p>\n
Cross-examining Mr Walsh, counsel for the employer Frank Drumm BL asked him: \u201cYou felt there was a conspiracy against you, they\u2019re all ganging up on you … When did you first begin to feel that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Walsh said he had \u201ca pretty big argument\u201d with Mr M in the spring of 2024, and that shortly after that, the roster was changed so that he and Mr M\u2019s shifts would not cross over. He regarded this as unsatisfactory. \u201cI recommended [Mr M\u2019s] dismissal,\u201d the claimant said. <\/p>\n
Mr Walsh\u2019s evidence was Mr M had \u201cgot the job\u201d through the a supervisor at the site \u201cbecause he\u2019s from Clondalkin as well\u201d. Mr M also had a \u201cconfidante\u201d \u2013 another long-serving printer from Clondalkin with whom he would get lifts to work from time to time, Mr Walsh said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWas there a particular problem with being from Clondalkin?\u201d Mr Drumm asked. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo, but if you\u2019re going to come with a ghetto attitude and square up to me, I\u2019m not taking it,\u201d Mr Walsh said. \u201cHe\u2019s talking to me as if he\u2019s from the ghetto and he\u2019s going to do something to me,\u201d Mr Walsh said. <\/p>\n
He added there were \u201cgood people from Clondalkin\u201d and referred to a previous job at a print plant in East Wall working with colleagues \u201cfrom the toughest part of Sheriff Street\u201d who were \u201cworking hard\u201d to get away from criminality in their communities. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf I come off as cocky, it\u2019s only because I know what I\u2019m doing. I\u2019m proactive, and I don\u2019t like doing sh**ty jobs,\u201d Mr Walsh said. <\/p>\n
Ms Byrne closed the hearing after hearing Mr Walsh\u2019s evidence of financial loss over a three-month period of unemployment following his dismissal. She said she would give her decision \u201cas soon as possible\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A printer has claimed he lost his job due to \u201cplotting\u201d against him by a group of ex-colleagues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-283488","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-workplace-relations-commission"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115892284469514498","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283488","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=283488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}