FOUR COMPANIES have been ordered to pay a total of €24,500 to former staff who they discriminated against because they were not Irish nationals.
The Equality Tribunal issued four separate rulings yesterday involving three Lithuanians and a Latvian, who were either unfairly dismissed or not paid the same redundancy payments which their Irish colleagues enjoyed.
Two of the Lithuanians, Irmantus Stukonis and Vygandas Urbonavicius, worked with Coalport Building company.
Mr Stukonis was dismissed by the company following a robbery at a building site where he worked as a security guard. He alleges that he told his Lithuanian colleague at the firm that he was assaulted by two men during the robbery and was allowed go home. He did not speak English well and relied on his colleague to help him communicate at work.
At a subsequent meeting the company’s officials demanded that he produce medical evidence to prove the assault and denied that it had allowed him to return home after the robbery took place. When he did not produce medical evidence he was dismissed.
The tribunal found the firm did not make any credible effort to ensure the complainant understood the gravity of the allegations made against him. It did not provide interpretation during the disciplinary meeting or have a disciplinary policy at the time. It also failed to investigate the circumstances of the robbery before dismissing Mr Stukonis and three colleagues, who were all Lithuanian.
“I am satisfied on balance that this would not have happened to an Irish employee in similar circumstances as that worker would have understood the allegation against him/her, and would have been able to articulate a defence to the charges,” said the tribunal.
It awarded Mr Stukonis €8,500 compensation for his distress. His colleague, Mr Urbonavicius, was awarded €500 in a related case decided by the tribunal yesterday.
In a separate case the tribunal ordered Realtime Technologies to pay €2,500 compensation to Dmitrijs Monajenkovs, a Latvian national who did not receive any redundancy payment when he was dismissed from his job.
The company said it had not paid Irish staff redundancy payment but could not provide evidence of this to the tribunal, which said this was not credible given it appears “that they would have qualified for such payments”.
In another case the tribunal ordered Securazone Manhour to pay Utaras Eimas €3,000 for discrimination and €10,000 for discrimination dismissal. It found the firm discriminated against foreign nationals by refusing to allow them to rotate the more dangerous night shifts – a perk enjoyed by Irish staff. It also dismissed all four foreign national staff when there was a downturn.
“I find that the circumstances of his dismissal do raise an inference that it was connected to the fact that, like his co-workers whose employment was also terminated, he was a non-Irish national and therefore connected to his race.”
