Farmer and processor at loggerheads over bonus payment

A Co. Cork farmer and a local processor who are at loggerheads over a bonus payment are due in court in the near future.

It is understood that the bonus payment in question is worth just over €1,300. The matter will be brought before Macroom District Court later this year.

The matter centres around a bonus payment that the farmer claims was owed to him by the processor; however, he alleges that he never received the payment.

The farmer claims that he was later told by the processor that he could air his grievances over the matter through its arbitration process.

Unfair dismissal case

Separately, a former farm manager who suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS) won over €31,000 in a judgement by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) after it deemed he was “unfairly dismissed” by his farmer employer.

The hearing heard the manager was dismissed from his position in June 2018, when the farmer allegedly told him that most people with his condition “would have fallen off the edge of the table by now”.

During proceedings the manager also pointed out that he had been told by his employer that if he took disability “now”, he would have a “better quality of life”.

He also pointed out that the farmer said to him that if they met across the table in 10 years’ time, “hopefully you will have no aids or wheelchair”.

The farmer was subsequently ordered to pay his former manager €31,240 by the WRC.