A former Debenhams employee who was refused statutory redundancy will now get the fee after the Office Relations Fee (WRC) discovered a Division of Social Safety official was fallacious to say she had too little service to be eligible.
he Social Safety deciding officer had come to the conclusion that the gross sales advisor on the shuttered retailer was three weeks wanting the two-year threshold for a redundancy as a result of she bought the Pandemic Unemployment Cost (Pup) for seven weeks between the beginning of the primary lockdown and the ending of her employment.
Sarah Sheehan mentioned she was “dissatisfied” with this ruling and took a grievance below the Redundancy Funds Act 1967 in opposition to the Division of Social Safety to problem it.
Ms Sheehan had labored for 12 hours per week between 26 April 2018 and 23 March 2020, when the shop was closed briefly due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
She was paid for her regular contracted hours as much as the top of March that 12 months earlier than being placed on layoff from April 1 to April 20, when she was in receipt of the Pup, the WRC heard.
Liquidators had been appointed to Debenhams Retail (Eire) Ltd on April 16, 2020, and Ms Sheehan’s employment with the agency ended 4 days later.
The Division of Social Safety took the place that with a purpose to qualify for a statutory redundancy fee, Ms Sheehan needed to be in insurable employment for no less than 104 weeks.
It informed the WRC that Ms Sheehan solely had 100 weeks of service as much as the date she was laid off.
Her time receiving Pup couldn’t be thought of reckonable service for the needs of a redundancy fee, it claimed.
It was on that foundation that the Division’s deciding officer despatched a “disallowance letter” to Ms Sheehan, it mentioned.
The complainant’s commerce union rep, Robert McNamara of Mandate, mentioned his shopper disputed the discovering that she had lower than 104 weeks’ service.
He argued that her employment relationship had continued previous the date of layoff.
Adjudicating officer Orla Jones agreed with the complainant’s place.
“The respondent… seems to be conflating ‘reckonable service’ and ‘continuity of service’,” she wrote.
She added that the laws on redundancy “doesn’t comprise any reference to ‘reckonable service’ and so it’s only steady service which is referred to and it’s clear from the laws that the interval of layoff doesn’t have an effect on or break this continuity”.
Though Ms Sheehan’s layoff interval needed to be excluded when it got here to calculating how a lot she was entitled to, it needed to be included in figuring out the length of her employment to determine whether or not or not she had handed the brink.
“The complainant on this case, by advantage of her employment begin date and finish date and together with the interval of layoff whereas on the Pup, has attained the 104 weeks steady service,” she wrote.
Ms Jones discovered the complainant “had established an entitlement to a redundancy fee” and upheld her enchantment and mentioned she ought to now be paid statutory redundancy by the Division of Social Safety.
The worth of the redundancy fee was not disclosed.
