{"id":624715,"date":"2026-09-14T20:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T20:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624715\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T20:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T20:54:08","slug":"wrc-awards-e11000-to-worker-sacked-within-days-of-warning-bosses-about-managers-irregular-practices-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/624715\/","title":{"rendered":"WRC awards \u20ac11,000 to worker sacked within days of warning bosses about manager\u2019s \u2018irregular\u2019 practices \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A phone shop worker who was made redundant three days after telling company bosses that his manager was claiming bonuses by marking down sales of phone cases as repair jobs has won nearly \u20ac11,000.<\/p>\n

Denes Jorge secured the award on foot of a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against his former employer, Anjnj Limited, trading as IT Star. <\/p>\n

Jorge worked between August 18th, 2024, and September 5th 2025 as a sales assistant on the minimum wage at the company\u2019s shop in D\u00fan Laoghaire, one of a chain of six, the Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC) was told. <\/p>\n

In his complaint form, Jorge wrote that about a month before his dismissal, the then store manager hired a new employee and stopped turning up at his scheduled shift start time of 10am. <\/p>\n

Jorge stated that he was \u201cleft to open and run the store every morning\u201d, with the manager only arriving at 12.30pm or 1pm. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Dentist ordered to pay worker \u20ac10,000 after bid to cut hours when she said she was pregnantOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The workload and responsibilities were \u201cexcessive\u201d and \u201cfar beyond the role of sales assistant\u201d, he wrote in his complaint<\/p>\n

\u201cIn practice, I was working more than the manager himself,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

He complained to company director Arthur Muzzi about the situation on WhatsApp on August 25th, 2025, and also flagged what he considered to be an \u201cirregular practice\u201d by the then store manager. <\/p>\n

The store manager, he wrote, \u201cwas selling phone cases but registering these sales in the system as repairs, thereby claiming the maintenance bonus for himself\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI believed this practice to be improper and potentially unlawful, and I felt it was my duty to report it,\u201d Jorge wrote. <\/p>\n

Three days later, he was given a letter dismissing him from his employment on the stated basis of redundancy with a week\u2019s notice, the tribunal noted. <\/p>\n

In the termination letter of August 28th 2025, the company cited an \u201congoing financial crisis\u201d and said it needed to restructure the business and reduce labour costs. <\/p>\n

It was the company\u2019s position that Jorge\u2019s line manager had a discussion with him concerning the future of the shop in August 2025, which Jorge denied. <\/p>\n

The company, which was represented by company director Arthur Martins at a WRC hearing in July this year, denied \u201cany unfairness\u201d in the dismissal and any link to Jorge complaining about his line manager. <\/p>\n

Adjudication officer Penelope McGrath upheld Jorge\u2019s complaint in a decision published on Monday and awarded him \u20ac10,800 for 20 weeks\u2019 loss of earnings. <\/p>\n

She wrote that his warning to the company director over WhatsApp \u201chad the hallmark of a protected disclosure\u201d. The complainant \u201cwas taking a significant personal risk in making allegations against his immediate manager. In any properly managed organisation, such concerns would ordinarily trigger an appropriate investigation.\u201d <\/p>\n

McGrath accepted the company \u201cmay have been experiencing trading difficulties\u201d. <\/p>\n

However, she found that without a meaningful consultation process, advance notice, or any consideration of alternatives to dismissal, the company fell \u201cconsiderably short\u201d of the standard required of a fair redundancy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A phone shop worker who was made redundant three days after telling company bosses that his manager was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,1962,6465],"class_list":["post-624715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-work","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624715","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=624715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}