A truck driver fired for clocking off for the night and leaving a load of concrete to go hard in a lorry has won €2,000 for unfair dismissal.
Brian O’Neill secured an order for a reduced award against his former employer, Total Highway Maintenance Ltd, on foot of a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977.
A Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator found the dismissal “procedurally lacking” – but concluded Mr O’Neill “knew or ought to have known” he could have been fired or reprimanded for his actions.
The tribunal was told at a hearing in August this year that Mr O’Neill started work at the company’s depot in Kilkenny at 5.30am on Thursday, September 28th, 2023, picked up a flatbed truck and drove it to Dublin to work.
When he was about to head back to the depot, his line manager asked him to work some extra hours and bring a load of concrete to Tallaght, the tribunal heard.
However, it turned out the customer only required a third of what had been loaded, it was noted. The complainant then drove the lorry, with the excess concrete still on board, back to the home depot in Kilkenny, arriving about 8.30pm, the tribunal recorded.
Mr O’Neill, who represented himself before the tribunal, said that by the time he finished up with the customer in Tallaght it was “already too late” to get rid of the excess concrete as the dump sites he would normally use were closed by then.
He said he was “exhausted” after 15 hours at work and that he meant to clean out the lorry the following day. The complainant said he knew the machine would be in such a state that it would be “unusable” the next day and accepted that he had been instructed to clean it out before finishing up.
“It seems that the concrete set overnight and rendered the truck unusable for up to two days, as up to two other members of staff had to Kango hammer the set concrete out of the back of the truck,” adjudicator Penelope McGrath noted.
A text exchange on a work WhatsApp group was exhibited by the respondent’s solicitor, Harry Carpendale.
The company’s managing director, Nigel Crosbie, wrote: “Thats some state to leave a lorry back in the yard. It’s to be cleaned when you get home.”
Mr O’Neill replied: “No bother, I will clean it when I get back this evening.”
However, when Mr O’Neill returned to work on the evening of Friday, September 29th, he was informed by an unnamed manager, described as Mr L, that his job was being terminated, the tribunal noted.
Mr Crosbie’s view was that contents of the lorry “should at the very least have been tipped out” – which Mr O’Neill stated he “did not think to do”.
It was submitted that Mr O’Neill had already been given two formal warnings by his employer in 2023 for “speeding and other road safety concerns”. Mr Crosbie said the concrete incident was “the final straw”.
The adjudicator, Ms McGrath, wrote that there was “no due process” in the termination of Mr O’Neill’s employment but that the complainant “knew he was bound to vex his employer”.
The loss of earnings in the case was only about four or five weeks’ wages, as Mr O’Neill was back at work by then.
“The complainant knew or ought to have known that his actions could give rise to a sanction up to and including the dismissal that ensued. The unfairness of this dismissal is therefore minimised,” Ms McGrath wrote.
She awarded €2,000 in compensation.
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