Irish Federation of University Teachers

The Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) has warmly welcomed a High Court decision regarding redundancy payments for fixed-term workers in universities.

In the High Court on 17 February, Mr Justice Kearns rejected an appeal by University College Cork (UCC) against an earlier Labour Court Determination, which had awarded six weeks’ pay per year of service to a lecturer who was made redundant when her fixed-term contract was not renewed by the University. In his ruling, the judge stated his satisfaction that the Labour Court “gave every aspect of this matter careful and comprehensive consideration”, and that the arguments by UCC were “precluded” under legislation.

Mr Justice Kearns also ruled that UCC’s position would “foster discrimination by encouraging employers to select fixed-term employees for redundancy ahead of permanent employees, thereby avoiding the creation of any form of precedent of enhanced redundancy payments against which fixed-term employees could measure their own payments”.

Mike Jennings, General Secretary of IFUT, said it was “a very important day for fixed-term workers, a huge number of whom are employed in universities”.

IFUT had previously written to the Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn, objecting to UCC’s “wasting of public funds” in fighting the case all the way to the High Court.

“Our victory today re-inforces the validity of that position”, Mike Jennings said.

The IFUT Media Release is available here.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 17th, 2012 at 15:00 and is filed under Contracts, Department of Education and Skills, Fixed-Term Workers Act, Fixed-term contracts, General Secretary, High Oourt, Irish Third-Level, Labour Court, Labour law, Legislation, Minister for Education, National Agreements, News, Redundancies, Redundancy payments, Researchers, Rights Commissioner, Salaries, UCC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.