Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC) in a decision published on Friday. <\/p>\nEircom cited \u201cintergenerational fairness, succession planning, and health and safety\u201d in a letter in August 2024 declining a request he had made to keep working past his 65th birthday the following month, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n
Representing himself before the WRC earlier this month, Hayes said he started his career as a trainee at the Department of Posts and Telegraphs in October 1980, prior to Eircom being founded with the privatisation of the telecoms system. <\/p>\n
His evidence was that he attended a medical appointment with an occupational health assessor in June 2024 and was deemed \u201cfit for work\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hayes added that after his retirement on September 24th, 2024, he was brought on by a third-party contractor to do work for Eircom which was \u201cidentical\u201d to what he was doing before. <\/p>\n
He said that the health and safety concerns Eircom was relying on to justify his mandatory retirement at 65 did not actually prevent him doing the work. <\/p>\n
He told the WRC he was \u201cfully capable\u201d of doing the job for longer, and set out a claim for financial loss calculated on the basis of working to the age of 70. <\/p>\n
\u00dana Stafford, managing director of Open Eir Networks, said retiring at 65 was the long-standing practice at the firm as part of a workforce planning strategy which involved taking on apprentices. <\/p>\n
Cross-examining Stafford, Hayes pointed to \u201cstaffing shortages and overtime demands\u201d which he argued showed there was an \u201congoing need for experienced technicians\u201d. <\/p>\n
He questioned the reliance of the firm on contractors. Stafford said contractors were being used \u201conly in limited or exceptional circumstances\u201d and that the retirement was \u201cnecessary\u201d for workforce planning. <\/p>\n
Stafford also said in her evidence that Hayes had an \u201cunblemished career\u201d with the utility and his service was \u201chugely appreciated\u201d.<\/p>\n
Adjudicator \u00dana Glazier-Farmer wrote it was of \u201csome significance\u201d that Hayes was let do \u201csubstantially identical work\u201d for Eircom Ltd through a third-party contractor. <\/p>\n
It undermined Eircom\u2019s stance on health and safety as a justification for mandatory retirement, she wrote. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis tends to weaken the respondent\u2019s reliance on health and safety as a justification for requiring the complainant to retire at age 65, particularly where he had also been certified fit for work,\u201d Glazier-Farmer wrote. <\/p>\n
However, she noted that Hayes\u2019s post-retirement work was \u201ca once-off six-week contract\u201d to respond to \u201ca rare occurrence of an extratropical cyclone, and not enough to make the retirement policy disproportionate. <\/p>\n
Glazier-Farmer concluded that Eircom was pursuing \u201clegitimate aims\u201d by imposing a retirement age of 65, which was an \u201cappropriate and proportionate\u201d way to pursue workforce planning, intergenerational fairness and health and safety. <\/p>\n
She dismissed Hayes\u2019s complaint on that basis, ruling he \u201cwas not discriminated against\u201d. <\/p>\n
The respondent was represented by Peter Ward, who appeared with Morgane Conaty, instructed by Arthur Cox<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tribunal has upheld the imposition of a mandatory retirement age on an Eircom worker who said he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-663413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663413","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=663413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}