{"id":538342,"date":"2026-07-08T00:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T00:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/538342\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T00:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T00:28:08","slug":"former-keelings-worker-loses-challenge-at-wrc-to-his-sacking-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/538342\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Keelings worker loses challenge at WRC to his sacking \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A warehouse worker who made \u201cextreme\u201d and \u201cunfounded\u201d claims on social media that excessive working hours at Keelings <\/a>were a factor in the deaths of two of his colleagues has lost a challenge to his sacking. <\/p>\n

Bosses at the fruit company took disciplinary action against the worker, Rudolf Csikos, after concerns were raised internally and the company received legal letters about his LinkedIn <\/a>activity in 2024 from its former HR manager, Audrey Cahill \u2013 who had been appointed director general of the Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> earlier that year. <\/p>\n

The position of the company was that the posts were \u201cseriously defamatory to several ex-colleagues\u201d.<\/p>\n

Csikos was dismissed for gross misconduct in November 2024 after 16 years at Keelings Logistics Solutions, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n

He made the posts in early October 2024, amid a long-running legal row with his employer over an alleged breach of statutory working time restrictions for night workers, which was denied by Keelings and rejected in a separate WRC decision earlier this year. <\/p>\n

Csikos maintained he ought to have been classified as a special category night worker under the provisions of the Organisation of Working Time Act, thereby restricting him to working no more than eight hours a shift on average, the tribunal noted. <\/p>\n

An occupational health consultant engaged by his employer carried out a risk assessment in June 2019, and disagreed, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe directed the posts at who he refers to as Audrey, a former HR manager of the respondent who is now director general of the WRC,\u201d adjudication officer Brian Dalton noted in his decision on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe stated that while she was HR manager, two colleagues died because of the employer\u2019s failure to comply with the Organisation of Working Time Act and its failure to carry out proper health screenings for night shift workers,\u201d he noted. <\/p>\n

At a hearing in 2025, the company\u2019s representative, Emily Maverley of the Irish Business and Employers\u2019 Confederation (Ibec), said the Keelings workers referred to by Csikos in his posts \u201cpassed away, unfortunately, in 2013\u201d, some 11 years before the posts. <\/p>\n

Giving evidence, company disciplinary officer Alan Morrissey said the posts were \u201cdamaging to the Keelings name, and our customers and other stakeholders\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no going back. I asked Rudolf did he think he made a mistake. He was quite happy in what he said and did,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

In a decision published on Tuesday, Dalton upheld Csikos\u2019s dismissal on the grounds of gross misconduct and rejected his claim that he was acting as a whistleblower when he took to social media. <\/p>\n

Without any medical or factual evidence to back up the allegation, Csikos could not have formed a reasonable belief \u201cthat the hours these workers worked led to their early deaths\u201d, he found. <\/p>\n

Csikos\u2019 statements on LinkedIn were \u201cextreme and unfounded\u201d, and it was \u201cproportionate to class what was published as gross misconduct\u201d, Dalton wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A warehouse worker who made \u201cextreme\u201d and \u201cunfounded\u201d claims on social media that excessive working hours at Keelings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,139419,6465],"class_list":["post-538342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-keelings","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}