A fashion buyer who felt she was “treated like a criminal” when she was fired while waiting for her work visa to be renewed has won €25,000 for unfair dismissal.
“I was in tears, crying non-stop. I told him my visa’s going to be renewed in three days, they can’t do it to me, it’s wrong. He said no, that’s your letter of termination,” the worker, Poliane Fernandes Lima, told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) earlier this year.
The tribunal said her former employer, Elland Distributors Ltd, trading as Born Clothing at an address in the Oranmore Business Park in Galway, was acting on “incorrect information” when it fired the worker.
Ms Lima said in evidence to a hearing in August this year that her boss, Marty Murphy, approached her as she was leaving work on 25 January 2024 with a letter of termination and told her to “go upstairs; take your belongings and leave”.
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Ms Lima said her visa had run out two days earlier, but she had a renewal appointment the following week and she had told the company’s payroll administrator the month before that she would be late having it renewed.
The company denied a breach of the Act. Giving evidence, Mr Murphy said when it realised there might be an issue with the paperwork, managers at the firm “immediately” looked for advice on the matter from its external human resources advisers.
“ESA, they told us the ramifications of employing someone without a working visa,” he said, of the discussions. He said it was his understanding there could be a “large fine”.
He was questioned by adjudicator Niamh O’Carroll on what discussions he had with Ms Lima about her visa before handing her the letter. Mr Murphy said the company “knew from conversations” Ms Lima had with the company’s payroll administrator that Ms Lima “was in renewals” for her visa.
“You didn’t ask her, you looked at what you had on file and said that’s it, you’re gone, without one conversation with her – why was that?” Ms O’Carroll asked.
“We had no paperwork, nothing, from Polly,” Mr Murphy said.
“You’re not answering the question I’m asking you. Why not go to her? Did you ask: ‘Did you get it renewed?’”
“No,” Mr Murphy said.
“You didn’t ask her that, you just dismissed her with no process whatsoever, no investigation, not so much as a question asked – why was that?” Ms O’Carroll asked.
“We cannot employ someone without a visa,” Mr Murphy said.
The tribunal heard Ms Lima was dismissed on Thursday 25th January this year and received her renewed visa on Sunday 28th January.
Ms O’Carroll put it to him that the visa renewal was inside Ms Lima’s notice period and asked whether this had been taken into consideration by the management.
“No, we did not,” Mr Murphy said.
The adjudicator paused her questioning of Mr Murphy at this point and addressed the respondent’s representative, Lauren Maguire of ESA Consultants – telling her: “Ms Maguire, you need to go back and negotiate more with the complainant. Read between the lines of what I’m saying. There’s no procedure followed whatsoever in this case.”
Ms O’Carroll then suspended the virtual hearing for a time before resuming the matter and proceeding to hear Ms Lima’s evidence.
She explained that she had been “happily employed” in Dublin working for a major international fashion house before being “hunted” for the position with Born Clothing in Galway.
Ms Lima said she had just got engaged in December 2023 and had applied for a mortgage with her fiance, to whom her immigration status was linked.
She said that when Mr Murphy came to her on January 25th and said the company was letting her go because of the expiry of her visa, she was “in shock”.
“I said it would be renewed; it could be back on Monday. He told me to go back upstairs, get all my belongings from my desk, and leave,” she told the WRC.
“I definitely feel like I was treated like a criminal, something like that. It’s very upsetting, why did they do that? To you now, I say I don’t know, because the relationship was always okay, never a question about my performance at work, so it was an absolute shock to me,” she told Ms O’Carroll.
“I was never illegally here, and I was never not able to keep working here – it seems like they don’t understand it,” Ms Lima said, just before Ms O’Carroll closed the hearing.
In her decision, published on Friday, the adjudicator said she was satisfied Ms Lima had applied for a visa renewal “well before it expired” and so met the Department of Justice’s criteria for the grace period.
“The information in relation to the visa is on the Department website and is readily available to anyone who looks for it. Even that menial task was not carried out prior to terminating the complainant’s employment,” she wrote.
The company had unfairly dismissed Ms Lima “in the absence of any procedures whatsoever and acting on incorrect information”, she concluded.
Noting that Ms Lima had made “strenuous” efforts to find new employment but had not by the time of the hearing in August this year, Ms O’Carroll directed Elland Distributors Ltd to pay the worker €25,000 in compensation.
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