A marketing executive at Coca-Cola who said she was “bullied” into taking a demotion from a management job to “nearly a graduate position” when she got back to work after having a baby has won €68,000 for maternity discrimination.
Lisa Deveney told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) at a hearing last winter that she thought she was going to return to her old job as premium spirits marketing manager, which she had held since 2018, at the end of maternity leave in January 2024.
She said she suffered an “acute stress reaction” after her colleagues were told the employee brought in to cover her absence would be staying in her former role.
Coca-Cola HBC Ireland Ltd has now been found in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998 on foot of a complaint by Ms Deveney.
The company had denied that complaint, along with a further complaint under the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994, which was not upheld by the tribunal.
Ms Deveney’s evidence was that she had been absent for one year and 21 days on the day she was to go back to work on 22nd January this year, owing to pregnancy-related health issues. It was her second period of maternity leave, she told the WRC.
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She said the first she was told that she would not be going back in as premium spirits marketing manager was at the end of a call the Friday before the week she was due back.
“I was a bit nervous about going back. There hadn’t been anything set up,” Ms Deveney said. She said a manager, Mr A, told her: “You won’t be returning to your role. We’re looking for you to return to a new role.”
“He didn’t know the [job] title at the time. I thought at the time it sounded like a demotion,” Ms Deveney said, referring to concerns about the fact she would no longer be reporting to a manager at director level.
“He said it would be good experience,” Ms Deveney said. Her response was: “Listen I’m not going to throw my toys out of the pram,” and that she asked for the job specification. “Obviously, I’m pretty sideballed. I thought I was getting my job back,” she said.
She said that Mr A told her they would sit down and discuss the position when she was back in the office on Monday, 22nd January. The complainant said she expected to see a job spec to review over the weekend, but that this was not forthcoming.
Ms Deveney said the next time she and the manager spoke was at a wider team meeting at 3.30pm that same day. “[He] started the call and said it was brilliant that I was back, that I was taking the premium spirits role and moving to [the other] team.”
“I assumed it was going to be a conversation, not a done deal – obviously it was,” she said.
“There’s a vast difference in experience,” she said of the new role description. “Three years’ experience, that could be nearly a graduate position – for me that’s quite a junior position,” Ms Deveney said.
She said she had to ask another colleague on the Tuesday to “hold off” on sending an email to the new team, telling her that she was “not accepting the position”. “I felt I was bullied into taking a role,” she said.
Mr A’s evidence to the WRC was that the role change was a process he and the complainant “were working through” prior to a formal offer being made.
His evidence was that Ms Deveney was “at no time ... asked to accept the position or to say that she wasn’t interested”. He said she told him she would “give it a go” and that he felt it was okay to move forward with it.
He explained that he planned to meet with Ms Deveney about the role prior to making a formal offer, but was “incredibly busy” the day she returned to work on Monday 22nd January.
He said that he had outlined the role as a “proposal” at the team meeting that day and that Ms Deveney had come to him afterwards stating that she was “blindsided” and raising concerns about demotion.
Mr A said he only became aware the following evening that the arrangement was drawing “an emotional response”.
Ms Deveney said she suffered a panic attack on the evening of Tuesday 23rd January and called in sick for the following day. She did not return to work prior to tendering her resignation in March, 2024, the tribunal was told.
Cillian McGovern BL, instructed by Aaron McKenna Solicitors for the complainant, said a worker hired in to cover his client’s absence had been “left in that position” when his client ought to have taken the job back.
Mary Fay BL, appearing for Coca-Cola instructed by Arthur Cox solicitors, told the WRC the job Ms Deveney previously occupied had “just grown to such an extent it would not be reasonable to expect one person to do all the duties” and that the position had to be “split”.
In her decision, adjudicator Patricia Owens examined the job descriptions for Ms Deveney’s former job and the new position.
She noted that the grade and pay were the same for both jobs. However, the old role was described as a “manager” position, reporting to director level, while the new role was described as a “lead” position and did not involve managing a budget, the adjudicator noted.
The “manager” position described responsibilities at a “strategic level” while the new “portfolio” lead had duties that were “very much operational”, she wrote.
She added that it was “not difficult to imagine how offensive” the suggestion that “a small portion” of the budget Ms Deveney once managed would be requested for her. Ms Owens concluded that the new post “constituted a demotion for the complainant”.
Ms Owens also wrote that she was “struck by the inconsistencies” in Mr A’s account of his discussions with the complainant on the new role, while Ms Deveney had been “consistent throughout”.
She concluded on the balance of probabilities that the employer had “already decided that the complainant would move to the new role upon her return from maternity leave and that there was no intention to provide her with options”.
Ms Owens called it a “fait accompli”, and also rejected a further argument by the firm that the transfer was required because of organisational change.
She concluded that Ms Deveney had been discriminated against on the grounds of gender by not being returned to her former position after maternity leave.
The adjudicator awarded €68,000 in compensation for the breach, just short of a year’s basic salary.
