An Italian woman who became pregnant while working as an underground geologist during the boring of the Dublin Port Tunnel has been awarded €15,000 for unfair dismissal by an Employment Appeals Tribunal.
The tribunal found Damiana O'Connor (nee Gernetti) of Foxhill Drive, Baldoyle, was dismissed by Coastway Ltd of Naas, Co Kildare, because she was pregnant.
Ms O'Connor began working with the company after getting her geomechanical engineering degree in Milan. Initially her job was to check the levellers, machines that check for sinking, and in November 2003 she switched to checking the rock face underground.
The new job involved following procedures to check safety for the people in the tunnel and the houses on the surface. When she found she was pregnant she told her GP that her job involved working in the tunnel and that it contained "many gases and had to be evacuated on occasions where the oxygen level had dropped and the carbon dioxide had reached dangerous levels."
The doctor advised her not to work in the tunnel and she told the tribunal that when she informed her supervisor about this, he asked her "why did [ she] come to work today"? She understood that this was the end of her job and left the site.
On checking her e-mail later that day, she discovered one from her employer dismissing her for "unreliable behaviour". She replied to the e-mail requesting an explanation and got no reply.
A week later she got a further e-mail from Coastway seeking her CV as a vacancy for a geotechnical engineer had arisen on another site. She told the tribunal she had hoped her employer could have facilitated her with a job involving paperwork while she was pregnant.
She had no idea where the notion of her unreliability had come from as her performance had never previously been mentioned in daily meetings with engineers and supervisors.
A director of Coastway, which supplied engineering staff to the main tunnel contractors Nishimatsu, told the tribunal Ms O'Connor had walked off the job after mailing him to say she was pregnant and was taking sick leave on the advice of her doctor.
The next day he e-mailed her to congratulate her on her pregnancy and also informed her that her employment was being terminated.
Under cross-examination, he said Ms O'Connor was fired from the tunnel job because Nishimatsu were unhappy with her but she was not dismissed and she was subsequently offered another job in Co Tipperary.
The tribunal found the claims of Coastway were "not credible" with regard to the incident which led to Ms O'Connor's belief she was dismissed.