A cancer patient who claimed her employer of 20 years cut her hours because it no longer wanted her as the “face” of the business after she was treated for a tumour which affected her appearance has won €20,000 for disability discrimination.
The worker, Nancy Doherty, won the compensation on foot of a complaint against Figary Water Sports Development Company Ltd to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) under the Employment Equality Act 1998.
Doherty was the co-ordinator a marina on Lough Swilly at Fahan, Co Donegal, run by the company, where she had been the only full-time employee since 2002, the tribunal heard.
She had to take medical leave from work for cancer treatment, including chemotherapy, surgery and “intensive and harsh radiotherapy” at various points, the tribunal heard.
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Her representative, Siobhán McCormack of the North Connacht and Ulster Citizens Information Centre, said in a legal submission that two directors of the company, John and Charlie McDaid, arrived to the Portakabin where Doherty worked in March 2023.
They told the claimant a decision had been made to cut her working days from five days to two, the tribunal was told.
Doherty was “extremely vulnerable as a result of her battle with the various cancer diagnoses” and “did not feel physically or emotionally fit” to challenge them, the WRC heard.
“They no longer wanted the complainant to be the face of Figary Water Sports because of her disabilities,” McCormack submitted.
Doherty suffered from numbness in the left side of her face and sometimes a speech impediment as the result of a salivary gland tumour.
Doherty’s case was that a worker, identified only as B, took up work for three days a week starting in September 2023, with the complainant’s hours reduced to just Mondays and Tuesdays.
The company maintained that B “was not an employee”. This position was rejected by adjudicator Shay Henry on foot of Doherty’s evidence that B was paid in cash.
On December 4th, 2023, another man – Michael McDaid – came to the marina office and told Doherty “they had decided to close the office every Monday and Tuesday” from the next week, the tribunal was told. .
When the complainant questioned John McDaid about this, he replied that he would get back to her about it in the new year, it was submitted.
Doherty proceeded to attend work the following week. Her case was that Michael McDaid “came bursting into the office that morning” and questioned her about her presence in a “hostile and irate manner”.
She was “effectively barred” from the office by Michael McDaid and departed her workplace of more than two decades “uncontrollably shaking and distressed”, McCormack said.
Michael McDaid was “not an employee or officer of the company” and had “no standing to issue any instructions”, the company’s solicitor, Donnacha Anhold, said. .
The company denied the second alleged encounter with Michael McDaid took place at all, Henry recorded in his decision, published on Monday.
The adjudicator noted Doherty wrote to John McDaid about her encounter with Michael McDaid. The director neither countermanded nor refuted Doherty’s version of events in reply, he added. He accepted that the encounter had taken place.
He found that Doherty suffered workplace discrimination when her hours were cut in December 2023, but ruled that since the claimant seemed to have accepted the first reduction in March 2023, discrimination did not take place then.
He awarded €20,000 in compensation.
