Employee awarded €67,500 over late payments by Cork firm

An employee who was repeatedly paid late by his Cork employer has been awarded €67,500 after the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) found that the failure to pay his wages on time amounted to constructive dismissal.

In a decision, the WRC found that pay was a fundamental term of the employee’s contract and that the repeated failure to pay him in accordance with that contract amounted to a fundamental breach.

The case was brought by Robert Donovan against Indeff Ltd, based on Cork’s Monahan Rd, where he had worked as a senior project manager since 2017. His contract provided for a basic salary of €67,500 a year, payable each month.

However, he told the WRC his wages were frequently paid late after global engineering and Luxembourg-headquartered firm Indeff took over his previous employer, ONG Automation, in 2019.

In October 2023, Mr Donovan wrote to senior management complaining that his September salary had not been paid and that he had been paid on time only once in the previous seven months. 

The following day, he was contacted by a senior director and subsequently summoned to a meeting with the company’s HR director and managing director for Ireland and the UK, where he was told he was being placed on a performance improvement plan (PIP).

Mr Donovan told the WRC that he was not given any explanation for the PIP and that he regarded it as a mechanism to remove him from the company. 

He resigned that day and served a three-month notice period but said the late salary payments continued.

On one occasion, Mr Donovan received €2,963.52 when he said he should have received at least €3,994. He also complained he was not consistently provided with payslips. 

The WRC found the complaint of unfair constructive dismissal to be well-founded and ordered Indeff Ltd to pay Mr Donovan €67,500 net within 42 days.