A FORMER executive with a State-funded body whose job included advising employers about how to avoid bullying in the workplace has been awarded €45,000 compensation for unfair dismissal.
An Employment Appeals Tribunal found that Elizabeth Doyle Fleming of Saucerstown House, Swords, Co Dublin,had resigned in September 2008 in circumstances that amounted to a dismissal.
She had been training and development executive with the National Irish Safety Organisation (NISO) which provides guidance on safety in the workplace.
“No evidence was adduced to rebut the presumption that the dismissal was unfair,” the tribunal said in a determination yesterday.
The tribunal said NISO appeared to have been an organisation with “internal rivalries and difficulties”.
A new chief executive was appointed in June 2006 with a brief to “drive through change” recommended in an external consultant’s report.
His predecessor as chief executive, only referred to as TOK in the determination, continued to work in the organisation.
The tribunal says in April 2008 TOK sent a “wide-ranging” e-mail to a number of people including several members of NISO’s executive committee and a number of past-presidents that alleged Ms Fleming had, for a period of months, bullied a former employee.
The allegation was not brought to Ms Fleming's attention and she first learned about it a month later from an article in the Sunday Tribuneheaded "Bullying claims made against anti-bullying advice body".
She made a written complaint expressing “shock and distress” and asked that the matter be fully investigated.
Two days later the chief executive, president, vice-president and honorary secretary resigned and new officers and an acting CEO were appointed.
She sought an apology and a guarantee that her complaint would be treated seriously. When this was not forthcoming she resigned in July and served her two months notice on stress-related sick leave.
The tribunal found that six weeks after Ms Fleming had made her complaint “there was no discernible progress”. She was “strongly of the belief” that NISO was “intent on not conducting an investigation.
The tribunal found that NISO “gave an undertaking that the matter would be investigated and then conducted no investigation at all”. It said it was “noteworthy” that NISO “moved with some alacrity in early July 2008 to commence an investigation into an allegation of bullying” made against Ms Fleming.