A marketing executive who said he “lost friends” for taking a workplace rights case against the operator of the Bingo Loco stage show has won €5,400 for unfair dismissal.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) heard Legs Eleven Ltd, trading as Bingo Loco, nearly halved its staff from 15 to eight between November 2023 and April 2024, by leaving vacancies unfilled and making two workers redundant after a slump in ticket sales last year.
In a decision just published, the tribunal accepted there had been a genuine redundancy situation at the company last winter – but that the company’s failure to follow “standard procedure” or to consider an alternative job for the worker, Gareth Elliot, made it an unfair dismissal.
Mr Elliot, who was working remotely from the Netherlands when he was put on notice of redundancy on November 9th last year, had told his bosses in an email that losing his job would leave him in a “very sticky situation” and that he would probably have to leave the country and move home to Dublin, the tribunal heard.
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‘I am back in the workplace full-time and it is unbearable. Managers have become mistrustful’
Giving evidence in May this year, the company operations director Stephen Kelly said it had moved to cut costs in October 2023, including changes to elements of its live shows to bring down bills. That then led to Mr Elliot being notified that his job was at risk of redundancy on October 9th, 2023 and receiving notice of termination on November 16th, effective at the end of the month, the tribunal heard.
Mr Kelly said the existing marketing operation for Bingo Loco “wasn’t filling the shows” and that the company decided last autumn that it would have to change its strategy to focus on “targeted marketing” rather than the content-focused work being done by Mr Elliot.
He told the tribunal the decision followed three consecutive months of a downturn in ticket sales.
“The content manager role wasn’t bringing in the revenue that we needed at that time,” Mr Kelly said.
Conor McCrave of Setanta Solicitors, appearing for the complainant, argued that his client could have been transferred into a role as a social media marketing manager which only had recently been filled at the time of the redundancy process.
Questioned on this, Mr Kelly said the firm “required someone with a couple of years experience in the paid social role, which Gareth did not have” and that Mr Elliot had never “shown us he had the skills to run a focused campaign” as the claimant had been “very focused on SEO [search engine optimisation] and email marketing”.
Mr McCrave put it to him that his client’s skills had been “transferable” and that he could have been trained.
“We weren’t in a position to train. We needed someone to come in and turn the ship around,” he said, adding that the employee hired for the social media role had “experience in an agency doing paid social ads”.
He said he explained to Mr Elliot during a redundancy meeting that the business was “making a consecutive loss month on month” but did not show him financial information.
Mr Elliot said he asked Mr Kelly about alternative positions, pointing out that he was the most experienced member of the marketing team and had prior experience in paid advertising work.
“He said my skills weren’t relevant and up-to-date in what they were looking for,” Mr Elliot said.
Asked by Mr McCrave whether he thought alternative roles had been “sufficiently explored”, Mr Elliot said he did not.
“At the time I went on holidays, two positions were filled. [The successful candidate’s] experience was two and a half years but my experience with digital marketing extends across eight years. It didn’t add up in my mind,” he said.
He said he was told that there were “financial issues” in the company and that the email marketing he was working on “wasn’t performing”.
“The targets I was given, they were hit. There was no indication I was doing bad on the email marketing,” he said.
He agreed with Mr McCrave when counsel put it to him that the company was “hiring people at the same time it said it had commercial difficulties” and that some of those hired were taking on parts of his job.
“I’m not here to gain anything,” Mr Elliot told adjudicator Catherine Byrne at the end of the hearing. “I’ve moved home from the Netherlands, I’m in a much better job. I just want to be here to stand up for myself – I just want to stand up for what I feel is right. I don’t feel good about the whole situation – I’ve lost friends over it,” he said.
In her decision, Ms Byrne said she was “satisfied” there had been a “genuine redundancy situation” at the company when Mr Elliot was dismissed, but that the company’s handling of the process had made it an unfair dismissal.
She said Legs Eleven had “made no effort to avoid dismissal by redeploying [Mr Elliot] to a role as social media marketing manager, as he suggested”.
“The complainant should have been permitted to try out this role for a trial period, and his performance should have been reviewed to determine if he was suitable,” she wrote.
Ms Byrne added that the process leading up to Mr Elliot’s dismissal was “not consistent with a standard procedure for making employees redundant”. This was because he was only told a week before receiving notice of dismissal that he was at risk of redundancy, was “never” told he could be accompanied or represented at meetings, and “wasn’t advised of any appeal process”.
“Some professional support, or even the support of a colleague, may have had the effect of slowing down the decision to terminate the complainant’s employment, and may have provided space to arrive at an alternative outcome” she wrote.
Ms Byrne had remarked at the hearing Mr Elliot found a new job with a multinational “quite quickly” after losing his job and returning home to Dublin.
Upholding his complaint, she awarded him €5,400, eight weeks’ gross pay, for the breach of the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977. The award was in addition to statutory redundancy of €3,240 already paid to Mr Elliot.
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