A warehouse worker has told a tribunal that her hands were left blistered and “almost without skin” from an adverse reaction to handling cosmetic products – but she kept going back to work because she needed money to support her family.
The worker told the Workplace Relations Commission that a colleague informed her another employee had experienced similar difficulties in the past.
Mother-of-three Santa Musinska has brought a series of employment rights claims against a number of companies associated with Masterlink Logistics group, as well as Oak Central Recruitment Services Ltd, the staffing agency which placed her at a Masterlink site in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, in October 2023.
She has alleged disability discrimination in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998 and unequal treatment compared to a directly-employed worker under the Protection of Employees (Temporary Agency Work) Act 2012, as well as referring a complaint of unfair dismissal under the Industrial Relations Act 1969.
Ms Musinska told the tribunal that she was a Latvian national who had been employed as a stock picker between 16 October 2023 and 19 January 2024 at the Clonmel warehouse.
She told the tribunal her job was to gather up “creams, mascaras, perfumes, everything from cosmetics” to make up boxes for delivery to shops and pharmacies, explaining to the tribunal that she was directed around the warehouse using a headset by a “robot” voice calling box numbers.
The complainant said that after a couple of days doing this work, her hands started to get “very itchy”. When she went to her doctor, she showed him “spots” and said they were “really sore”.
Ms Musinska said her hands did improve, and she returned after a period of absence in October that year.
However, after resuming work, she said that was when her hands “started to get almost without skin”. She said “blisters” had also formed.
“It was really, really bad. I couldn’t work at home, I couldn’t peel my potatoes – I couldn’t do anything, my sister had to do everything,” she said.
Her barrister, Eleanor Power BL, asked: “Why did you go back if your hands were not fully healed?”
“I needed money. I have three kids, myself. I’m living with my sister, she’s two kids, struggling, and I’ve a mom, she’s on my care, my mom. I know I have hands bad, but I still went back, I was trying,” Ms Musinska said.
She explained that the company provided rubber-coated cloth gloves when she asked for them and that she took to wearing latex gloves underneath these as she continued at work. However, she said even with the gloves her hands were still “really itchy” and that she was changing the gloves frequently.
Ms Musinska said that when she mentioned her difficulties to a colleague, he told her that another employee had experienced similar difficulties in the past and had been transferred to dealing with another product line.
She said she “always worked with cosmetics” at the warehouse. When Ms Power put it to her that it was “obvious that the issues in your hands were directly related to the picking you were doing”, Ms Musinska agreed.
The complainant said that after she was “fired” in January 2024, it took a “couple of months” for her hands to recover.
“You still see scars and everything, but it’s okay, [I have] great hands now,” she said.
Solicitor John Connellan, acting for the staffing agency, Oak Central, said that his client, and not Masterlink, was Ms Musinska’s employer.
Earlier this week, adjudicating officer Úna Glazier-Farmer adjourned the matter to a future date, to be set in due course, after hearing evidence from Ms Musinska on her discrimination complaint and the two Employees Act claims.
Members of the public and the press were excluded from the hearing for a time while the WRC addressed Ms Musinska’s Industrial Relations complaint, a statute which requires a private hearing.
