A €95,000 A YEAR senior An Post manager who was only provided with work for 11 weeks last year should be paid a performance-related bonus of almost €11,000, the Labour Court has ruled.
The court’s recommendation says the manager was assigned to An Post’s resource centre in January 2007 and remained there until October. “Staff are assigned to the resource centre when there is no work available for them,” the court says.
For the last 11 weeks of the year the manager, who was not named by the court, was assigned to An Post’s strategy and business excellence directorate.
Having assessed his performance in his new role during the last quarter of 2007, An Post decided to award him a bonus payment of 16 per cent of his salary – 6 per cent for “personal performance” and 10 per cent for “company performance”.
However, as he had only worked in this role for 11 weeks in 2007, the bonus was calculated on a pro-rata basis. He was paid 11/52th of 16 per cent of his annual salary, or more than €3,200.
The manager did not agree with the pro-rata payment, arguing that An Post should have applied the 16 per cent as a percentage of his whole year salary which would have given him a bonus of almost €15,200.
His claim was backed by the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants. When the row could not be resolved at local level, it went to a conciliation conference under the auspices of the Labour Relations Commission.
At conciliation talks in May, An Post made an offer of an additional €7,486 ex-gratia payment. It was rejected and the issue went before a Labour Court hearing last month.
The union told the court that An Post had denied the manager “the opportunity to participate fully in the organisation by not providing him with work during the period January to October 2007 and thereby denying him the opportunity to earn his full bonus for the year”.
He was available for work, that suitable work existed and he had made several requests for work.
An Post said it operated a performance-related reward system for its managers. “Bonus payments are not an entitlement but are based on an assessment of actual performance and as such are at the discretion of the company.
“There is no contractual basis for the worker’s claim that he should be paid a bonus for the full year 2007 in circumstances where he was surplus and only employed on effective work for 11 weeks of that year,” An Post said.
In a recommendation that has just become available, the court found the manager “was entitled to the full company performance bonus despite his assignment to the resource centre and accepts that the personal performance is subject to an assessment of the employee’s work.
“Therefore, the court upholds the company’s actions in not paying the personal performance bonus for the period when he was not actively engaged, through no fault of his own.”
Consequently, the court recommended An Post’s May “gesture of goodwill” additional bonus payment should be reoffered and “accepted in full and final settlement”.