Tribunal upholds company's dismissal of worker for stealing sweets

A warehouse worker’s action helping himself to sweets from a ‘Celebrations’ box quickly turned sour after he lost his €32,306 per year job over his 'sweet tooth'.

Tribunal upholds company's dismissal of worker for stealing sweets

By Gordon Deegan

A warehouse worker’s action helping himself to sweets from a ‘Celebrations’ box quickly turned sour after he lost his €32,306 per year job over his 'sweet tooth'.

The Slovak national brought an unfair dismissal case against his un-named employer, a food retailer here employing 3,000 people in over 100 stores.

However, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) has dismissed his action finding that the decision by the retailer to sack him was fair.

The warehouse worker was one of three workers to take some of the chocolate Celebrations sweets on the night of December 4th 2016 and a second was also dismissed with the third worker resigning.

The firm stated that it has a zero tolerance policy towards theft and that the monetary value of the sweets was irrelevant.

In her decision, WRC Adjudication Officer, Patsy Doyle said that while the dismissal was admittedly harsh for a first offence on a blemish free record, the worker was on proper notice of the zero tolerance policy no matter what the scale.

Ms Doyle said that she found that the retailer has established substantial grounds justifying the dismissal and found the dismissal to be fair in the circumstances.

The man commenced working for the retailer in August 2013 to the date of his dismissal in February 2017.

In the incident, the company report that the man took ‘Celebration’ sweets out of a crate on the night of December 4th 2016 on three occasions and ate them.

The crate in question served as a container for the redistribution of damaged stock for charity, reprocessing or disposal purposes.

The food retailer spotted the worker taking the sweets on CCTV and the man was suspended on January 11th 2017.

At an internal disciplinary hearing at the retailer, the man admitted that he had taken the sweets without permission.

He went on to state that he presumed that he could take the sweets as they were in an unmarked box. He admitted that he had made a mistake, but denied that it was theft.

The retailer did acknowledge that in isolated incidents during Halloween 2013 and Easter 2014, surplus stock, including marshmallows, were distributed to staff but it stated this was not comparable to the incident before the WRC.

In February 2017, the retailer dismissed the man “for gross misconduct for theft of company property on foot of his having removed and consumed stock without permission”.

The retailer submitted that the warehouse worker was on notice that any type of theft of company property, regardless of the value of the item in question, to be an extremely serious matter.

A work colleague for the retailer told the WRC that when the warehouse operator was informed that he was going to be suspended, he said that was going to get the same lawyer as a colleague and obtain €50,000.

In his evidence, the worker recalled receiving surplus stock around Easter, Halloween and Christmas every single year and he understood that the loose sweets in the black crate were for general consumption on the night of December 4, 2016.

The man’s solicitor told the WRC hearing that it was not unreasonable for his client to assume that a crate of mixed stock left outside an ambient office was for consumption.

The man said that he has not obtained any work since his dismissal from February of last year and that his dismissal was unreasonable.

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