Two low-paid Traveller workers have been awarded nearly 11,000 each for whistleblower penalisation and discrimination after they wrote a series of letters complaining about the running of the State-funded community support organisation which employed them.
The sums awarded by the Workplace Relations Commission amount to two and a half years' pay for each of the women, who earned just 84 a week as part-time minimum-wage community welfare officers with over a decade’s service with the unidentified community support organisation.
It upheld complaints made by the workers under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 and the Employment Equality Act 1998 in an anonymised decision published this morning.
The workers had both made formal complaints about their former line manager in the spring and early summer of 2021 and had written to the organisation’s board and its State patron with concerns about the its safety protocols during the Covid-19 pandemic, among other matters.
Their trade union rep, Michael Kerrigan of Fórsa, said the workers had been "effectively removed" from their jobs and put on "an unauthorised and illegal suspension".
Both workers said in evidence that they had been removed "without cause" from a conference call on September 28th 2021 and denied access to later remote meetings.
Other employees, who were "not members of the Travelling community" had been "raising similar points" on that call, but were not removed, they said.
The two complainants also told the...
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