A HEALTHCARE ASSISTANT has said she had no choice but to leave her job at a charity which works with disabled people over how it handled an investigation after she was falsely accused of “sexually harassing service users through innuendo”.
The details were heard at a Workplace Relation Commission hearing where the healthcare assistant, Vanessa Byrne, is taking a constructive dismissal case against Cheshire Foundation Ireland.
The WRC heard that Cheshire Ireland’s Waterford branch has seen several resignations over the past year due to an alleged “toxic culture” where management and staff are “at war with each other” and service users are “let down” as a result.
Byrne was suspended with pay for nine months while the investigation into the allegation against her went on, and she was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing in May last year.
Despite this finding, Byrne was allegedly not asked to return to work and decided that July to resign. Following this, Cheshire Ireland asked her if she would reconsider and take her job back at the group.
Byrne and her trade union Siptu criticised the length of time the internal investigation took and noted that they had repeatedly raised concerns about the process.
Byrne said she had been through a “gruelling” experience after what she described as a “vexatious” and unfounded complaint about her, while also accusing Cheshire of not handling allegations of “verbal abuse” she had seen towards service users by staff members.
Responding, Cheshire said it had an obligation to treat “any suspicion of abuse” extremely seriously.
Giving sworn evidence at Waterford Courthouse, Byrne alleged she was asked by a member of management in the charity to “get information and watch and follow two [union officials in the workplace] to take them down” within 12 weeks of starting the job in 2019.
“I refused this. I walked away, I was in shock,” she told WRC adjudicator Gaye Cunningham.
“I was asked to get information. There were two shop stewards, [I was told] to watch them, to follow them, they wanted rid of these two staff members.”
She said that while she didn’t “particularly like” one of the shop stewards, she said the man had “a mortgage, a wife and a family” and she refused to go along with the alleged request. Byrne claimed her hours were reduced as a result.
These were later restored after she complained to a more senior member of management, the WRC heard.
During cross examination, Byrne said she believed “too many lives [were] being hurt” inside the organisation’s Waterford branch.
“I hope to God the service users get treated. I signed an oath to protect vulnerable people and it’s not adhered to in Waterford Cheshire,” she alleged.
“There’s too many games being played in there and too many lives being hurt… I’ve worked over 30 years with people with intellectual disabilities [and] I’ve never experienced what I’ve experienced up there. Nothing comes close to it.”
She said there was a “war going on between management and staff” while some people were caught in the middle.
“But the biggest part of it all was, we were forgetting the service users, the most important people in the building.”
A HR representative for Cheshire, Aidan Phelan, told the WRC that there had been “one trade union in the service for an extended period” which went unnamed during the hearing.
But this changed after “somebody in Waterford joined Siptu”, with a “group grievance” outlining internal issues submitted shortly afterwards.
Rachel Hartrey, a Siptu representative for Byrne said “poor management and a high level of friction” in the workplace had contributed to the situation.
She added that Byrne was placed initially on protected leave and then suspension with pay in September 2021 and was not cleared of wrongdoing until May 2022.
Although both named witnesses mentioned in the initial complaint “did not agree with the allegations” made against Byrne, the charity sought more witnesses to speak to in their investigation.
“The entire investigation should have ended there, instead more witnesses were interviewed,” Hartrey said.
“Vanessa named four witnesses that did not concur with allegations as early as January 2022 – investigators still interviewed five more and took nine months.”
Prior to working at Cheshire, Byrne had not been the subject of any complaints or any disciplinary procedures according to Hartrey.
“There was only one witness out of nine employees who spoke negatively of Vanessa,” Hartrey said of the internal investigation, adding that she believed this was a person who also “breached confidentiality” by speaking to service users about the matter.
Phelan said that Byrne and two other staff had submitted 27 grievances at one stage, with the WRC also told that those other two staff had resigned around the same time as Byrne.
Following what she outlined as a three-month wait to be asked to return to work, she decided to resign.
Byrne told the hearing that “a lot of small things” took place between staff, but added these were “not small to the service users”.
“Management did not seem to be in support of the staff and their caring for the people,” she said.
Phelan told the WRC that “a loss of faith in procedures does not absolve” Byrne from engaging in the internal processes at the organisation.
“The procedures were there,” said Phelan, who likened the situation between Byrne and the charity to a marriage.
“If someone wants to make their marriage work, you try something, you go for counselling,” he said, “all we’re saying is give us a chance to resolve our differences.”
Phelan also said that any issues with the processes around Cheshire’s internal investigation, as argued by Hartrey, would “only be relevant” if the investigators had not exonerated Byrne.
Addressing the length of the investigation, he said the charity had to take “any suspicion of abuse” seriously.
He cited a previous ruling in a separate workplace relations case by the Labour Court which found that although a company’s internal investigation lasted seven years, this “did not render it [the investigation] unfair” on the employee.
Phelan claimed that Byrne had plenty of opportunities to get new work, thereby mitigating her financial losses, noting media reporting that there have been attempts to recruit health workers from overseas amid an “average of 4.5 vacancies in nursing homes”.
“A healthcare worker actively seeking work would have been expected to immediately find other work,” he said. “If they find new work with less hours and less pay this would not have been them doing their maximum to minimise their loss.”
Hartrey told the hearing that Byrne did quickly find new employment with the HSE, but that she has calculated the healthcare assistant has lost out on €17,160 as a result of her resignation from Cheshire, under the terms of the Unfair Dismissals Act.
Byrne has taken up work with the HSE on a temporary contract earning approximately €200 a month, compared to her past earnings of €753 monthly pay. When she worked for Cheshire, Byrne worked from 35 hours to 45 hours on a weekly basis.
Concluding the hearing, Cunningham said a decision can be expected in six to eight weeks, with an option for appealing her findings to the Labour Court.
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