Tribunal awards lecturer €15,000 for victimisation

WATERFORD Institute of Technology (WIT) has been ordered to pay €15,000 to a lecturer who the Equality Tribunal found it had victimised.

Kathleen Moore Walsh, a US citizen working in the college’s School of Humanities, had initially claimed she was discriminated against on the grounds of race and gender.

The tribunal rejected these claims, which were made on the alleged less favourable treatment given to her compared to a male Irish lecturer who had also made a bullying complaint.

However, it upheld her complaint that WIT had victimised her for having brought previous equality cases to the tribunal.

In June, 2004, the tribunal issued a decision in her favour in respect of an earlier complaint against the college, which appealed the finding to the Labour Court on July 20 that year.

Two days later, the head of the school of humanities drafted a letter altering her lecturing hours, and it was posted to her a week later on the same day that the earlier case was made public. It suggested that the school head was aware of stress she had referred to in an informal bullying complaint she had made the previous month.

The tribunal found the school head should not have been aware of Ms Moore Walsh’s health issues, as she had not raised them with him. She alleged to the tribunal that part of her victimisation related to various members of college management being made aware of her confidential communications in relation to the bullying matter.

Other issues included her interactions with an external examiner being discussed at a meeting she did not attend, the change in her lecturing duties and her becoming the subject of a proposed academic inquiry.

The college denied Ms Moore Walsh’s claims of discrimination and victimisation.

The tribunal upheld her complaint that she was harassed on racial grounds when a male student mocked her accent. But it decided that the college did not discriminate against her in this matter because it could not have done anything further to prevent it, having put a respect and dignity policy in place under which the lecturer could have brought the behaviour to the attention of the college authorities, which she chose not to do.

Ms Moore Walsh had also claimed she suffered stress, bullying and harassment at the hands of a certain group of students she taught in 2004 and 2005. While these incidents were not disputed by the college, the tribunal found that a lot of them appeared to be disruptive behaviour rather than discriminatory treatment under the definition of equality law.

In her decision issued last month, equality officer Mary Rogerson ordered that the college pay Ms Moore Walsh €15,000 in compensation in respect of the acts of victimisation.