A senior lab technician sacked after it was alleged he had been sleeping in a first aid room \u2013 thereby contaminating it with hazardous lead dust from his work gear \u2013 has lost a challenge to his dismissal.<\/p>\n
The Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> rejected the challenge by Edson Simoa De Morais against Omac Laboratories, operator of ALS Minerals in Loughrea, Co Galway<\/a>.<\/p>\n The tribunal previously heard De Morais worked at his employer\u2019s metallurgy lab testing ore samples for their concentration of precious metals by firing them in a furnace with lead flux.<\/p>\n Robin Hyde, the company\u2019s solicitor, said the danger of lead poisoning was so great to pregnant and nursing mothers in particular that the firm only assigned men to carry out the procedure.<\/p>\n Staff were required to abide by strict rules on washing themselves and removing personal protective equipment before leaving for clean areas of the facility so that lead dust would not spread.<\/p>\n However, the tribunal heard De Morais was discovered locked in the room by a colleague, and, when he opened the door, he told the colleague \u201che was sleeping\u201d.<\/p>\n Emer Feeney, De Morais\u2019 barrister, said her client \u201cwas using the toilet\u201d, and there was a \u201cverbal agreement\u201d between he and his supervisor that he could take breaks there.<\/p>\n Human resources officer Aisling Reardon said a company investigation found De Morais had been using the first aid room for non-medical purposes such as using the bathroom, making personal phone calls, and, on one occasion, \u201cfalling asleep\u201d.<\/p>\n The investigation concluded he \u201cactively endangered\u201d the safety of others when he wore his \u201clead-contaminated\u201d uniform in the first aid room.<\/p>\n When De Morais was shown the findings of a swab test, showing a high buildup of lead dust in the first aid room, his response was: \u201cYeah, I saw, it looks like CSI\u201d, Reardon told the tribunal.<\/p>\n She said the room was for the use of all staff in the facility if first aid was required \u2013 but was also the designated location in the facility for nursing mothers to breastfeed, and for pregnant workers to rest.<\/p>\n Health and safety officer Paul Fahy, told the tribunal that after the swab test confirmed a high presence of lead, the first aid room had to be decontaminated.<\/p>\n Phillip O\u2019Neill, the company\u2019s assigned disciplinary officer, gave evidence dismissal was the only option on the basis De Morais \u201cknowingly contaminated\u201d the room with lead despite \u201cextensive safety training\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior lab technician sacked after it was alleged he had been sleeping in a first aid room…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4500,61,60,43,6465],"class_list":["post-539798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-galway","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539798","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=539798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}