An error at pharma giant Bristol Myers Squibb left bosses attempting to dock tens of thousands of euro from nearly a dozen Irish staff the firm says weren’t meant to be getting paid parental leave, a tribunal has heard.
A barrister acting for the multinational told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on Wednesday it “obviously was ridiculous” that the company gave one employee just three months to come up with €20,800 to cover an alleged “overpayment” by year-end.
In a complaint under the Payment of Wages Act 1991, the employee, Adrienne Doyle, a mother of two from Ashbourne, Co Meath, is challenging the legality of the company’s decision to deduct her salary by €870 a month over two years.
Ms Doyle told the WRC she was absent from work on maternity leave in October 2023, when the company announced a programme called “Bristol Myers Squibb Ireland Reimagined”.
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She said she dialled in remotely to a “town hall” meeting on the new programme, when one of a range of staff benefits announced was an “enhanced” entitlement to paid parents’ leave.
A top-up to the statutory parental leave entitlement – worth between €260 and €270 at the time – would ensure staff at the firm with children under two could remain on their full pay, Ms Doyle said.
While the statutory leave was capped at seven weeks off at the time, Bristol Myers Squibb was offering 12 weeks off, she said.
Ms Doyle said she logged into the human resources portal on January 9th, 2024, and applied for seven weeks off, with the leave being approved by her manager, Cornelius Pretorius, and by the company’s people services department.
She said she later extended the leave from seven weeks to 12. However, five months later, in October 2024, the company wrote to tell her there had been “an overpayment”.
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She said the company was at that point making reference to “eligibility criteria whereby a child had to be born on or after 1 January 2024”. Her youngest child had been a year old at the time of the town hall meeting in October 2023, she said.
“That criteria wasn’t published at the time of my application nor the time of my leave approval,” she said, adding that there had been no reference to it in material she had consulted on the company portal or at the meeting.
“I wouldn’t have applied for it [the leave] if I didn’t meet that criteria. That is a company error that an employee on leave didn’t receive incredibly critical information,” she said.
Ms Doyle said the company updated its documentation on parental leave only in March 2024, and that the change was not pointed out to her until the question of docking her pay was raised in October 2024.
Kiwana Ennis, BL, for the respondent, said: “The company has to acknowledge this situation, which is very unfortunate, and I can certainly understand Ms Doyle’s position in respect of it; it did occur due to an administrative error on the part of the company.
“Obviously there was a mistake, our mistake, but that doesn’t give rise to a contractual entitlement.”
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She said the company was entitled to recoup the sum by way of wage deductions, according to the Act.
Ms Ennis told the tribunal there were 10 other staff in the respondent company who were also put on notice of overpayment, ranging from €3,000 to €11,000. The other staff were “required to repay it, and they all have”, she said.
Ms Ennis said Ms Doyle had been given the option of using contractual annual leave days and bonus payments to offset the alleged liability.
Adjudicator Michael MacEntee said: “Asking someone to repay €20,000; that’s a substantial sum of money in any man or lady’s language.” He asked whether a longer repayment schedule had been considered.
Ms Ennis said: “I know Ms Doyle referenced repayment in three months ... obviously it was ridiculous, that was the entire wages for her for three months. That was never going to be a tenable situation.”
Mr MacEntee is to issue his decision to the parties in writing in due course.
