Logistics multinational DHL has been ordered to pay a redundancy package worth over €18,000 to a warehouseman left jobless after he turned down a transfer to a site that would have required a return commute up to five hours long.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has upheld a complaint under the Redundancy Payments Act 1967 against DHL Supply Chain Limited by stock picker Oscar Solano Fernandez, who lost his job of 15 years after bosses decided to shut down and sell off a warehouse in Clondalkin, Dublin 22.
A senior HR manager in DHL had denied keeping workers “nominally in employment” when the warehouse closed, in a bid to “avoid” paying staff their statutory redundancies.
Mr Solano told a hearing last the alternative job offered by the company at a Tesco distribution centre near Donabate in north county Dublin was a two-bus journey which could take between 90 minutes and 2.5 hours each way from his home in the Coombe, Dublin 8.
He told the WRC he had been able to catch a bus at the door of his apartment building and get to his former workplace at Oak Road in Clondalkin in 15 to 20 minutes – and that the new commute required of him would interfere with his family life.
“I don’t have nothing against DHL; they gave me a chance to work with them – but I didn’t want to be spending two, three hours per day going to and back from work, because I have a responsibility to my family. To me, family goes first,” Mr Solano said.
Mr Solano, originally from Madrid, Spain, said he came to Ireland in 2005 with a former girlfriend and had limited English when he was brought on as an agency cleaner at a DHL warehouse before he was offered a contract of employment with DHL in 2008.
He said that prior to his resignation, he and his partner, a bank employee, were paying so that their seven-year-old daughter could stay back after school until he got off work at 4pm and could go and collect her.
Peter Spencer, a DHL human resources manager, said in evidence that after the company’s global board announced the sale of the Oak Road site where Mr Solano was working, local management was in talks with the client firms housed there to find new logistics premises on the southside of the capital.
However, when one of the largest clients at the site, Argos, announced that it was pulling out of the Irish market, it became “unviable to look for a property in south Dublin”. DHL moved to make 37 out of 40 warehouse staff who worked on the Argos contract redundant, the witness said – leaving another 88 office workers and 24 warehouse staff to accommodate, the WRC heard.
He said the redundancies were limited to those workers who were “wholly or mainly associated” with the Argos contract.
The arrangements for the others, including Mr Solano, were dealt with by way of collective bargaining with their trade union, Siptu, leading to a deal limiting transfers to locations within 50km of the Clondalkin site and a relocation package consisting of a bonus payment of €1,000 and €5,000 worth of Perx vouchers spread over three years, he said.
“We understand, as an employer, that moving people from the southside to the northside, it’s an ask. We negotiated a relocation package – a substantial package, in our opinion,” he added.
Questioning the witness, barrister Paul D Maier BL, for Mr Solano, instructed by Ciarán Ahern and later Peter Murphy of McInnes Dunne Murphy solicitors, said: “I have to put it to you that part of the motivation for keeping people nominally in employment was to avoid paying redundancy,” he said.
“We’d absolutely dispute that point,” Mr Spencer said.
Niamh Ní Cheallaigh of the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (IBEC), for DHL, argued that the company did not breach Mr Solano’s contract of employment, because his original contract included a “flexibility clause”.
“No redundancy situation arose and there was suitable alternative work; that’s demonstrated by the fact that 112 people did relocate. Everyone was treated the same – of those who transferred, 52 had children,” she said.
In his decision, adjudication officer Brian Dalton found that the relocation proposed for Mr Solano was “not reasonable” and ruled his complaint under the Redundancy Payments Act 1967 to be “well founded”.
He found Mr Solano was “entitled to a redundancy payment” based on his weekly wages of €580 and more than 15 years’ service.
Mr Maier had told the tribunal the statutory redundancy package due to his client was worth over €18,000.
Addressing Mr Solano’s further complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act, he found the employer’s actions had been reasonable and that constructive dismissal did not arise.
As there was a “legitimate business right to move location” based on objective criteria, Mr Dalton found that discrimination on the grounds of family status did not arise, rejecting Mr Solano’s third complaint under the Employment Equality Act.
