A tribunal has ruled that a meat plant boss acted reasonably by dismissing a worker he accused of pointing a knife at him after finding that the company director would not have risked slowing down the line “without good reason”.
However the sacked worker, de-boner Jose Antonio Viana-Pereira, secured an award of €1,500 under the Unfair Dismissals Act after his dismissal in January 2024 by Boyne Valley Meats Ltd was ruled procedurally unfair by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).
The ruling was accompanied by the rejection of a further complaint of racial discrimination by the worker, who alleged he was told to “go back to Brazil” by a company director.
That allegation had been denied by the director, Robin Gogan, who told the WRC Mr Viana-Peireira pointed a knife and got “aggressive” when he gave an instruction.
Mr Viana-Pereira told the WRC he was at work on a de-boning line when the company director approached and complained that he and other workers were “not cleaning the bones”.
The complainant said the director began to load carcasses onto the conveyor belt in such a way that there was “too little room”, and that he objected to this.
The company director said Mr Viana-Peireira “started shouting” at him. He said that he told the complainant if he was “not happy” he could “go home”. At this point, he said Mr Viana-Peireira approached him “with a knife in his hand, while pointing the knife” and “shouting aggressively” in Portuguese.
The company director said he “felt threatened” and told the complainant “repeatedly” to go back to his workstation, before finally telling him to “go home”.
The witness added that he left the room where the complainant was working and told the worker he would “call the guards” if he didn’t go.
Adjudication officer Orla Jones wrote that it was not her job “establish the guilt or innocence” of the complainant, but to consider whether the employer “acted reasonably”.
She found there were “many inconsistencies” in Mr Viana-Pereira’s account of what happened. Her view was that the company director “would not take lightly the decision to dismiss someone there and then, thus jeopardising the production line”.
“Any such decision would not have been taken without good reason given,” she wrote. “Therefore, I must consider that on balance of probabilities, the respondent decision to dismiss must have been taken for a reason, and the reason being provided in evidence is that he felt threatened by the complainant’s behaviours and actions,” she wrote.
She found that although the decision to dismiss was “one which falls under the band of reasonable responses”, the dismissal was effected in a procedurally unfair manner, and upheld the complaint on that basis.
Ms Jones added that “no procedure was followed” other than to tell the complainant to “go home”, followed by an email from his supervisor telling him he is “no longer working for the company” and a subsequent letter of dismissal.
She awarded €1,500 for unfair dismissal, calling the complainant’s evidence of efforts to reduce his losses by finding new work “sub-optimal”.
Ms Jones recorded that the complainant had, while giving his evidence, referred to being told to “go back to his workstation”, to “go home” and to “go back to Brazil”.
She found he was “inconsistent in his account of what was said” by the company director, and rejected the further complaint of racial discrimination under the Employment Equality Act 1988.
Arising from the finding of unfair summary dismissal, Ms Jones directed the payment of one week’s wages in lieu of notice to Mr Viana-Pereira, under the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973. The worker’s weekly wages were not stated in the decision document published today.
Mr Viana-Pereira’s representatives at the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI) have stated that they are appealing the case to the Labour Court.
