Question: My son worked as a HGV lorry driver for a co-op for eight years.

After about four years in the role, they employed a HGV driver for holiday relief. Three months later, that person was made permanent and my son was passed over for the role.

When the next permanent HGV driving job came up, the same thing happened again. My son left after that, with the co-op then offering him a monetary sum, which he didn’t accept.

I would like to know how long should a person work part-time before they should be made permanent?

Answer: It is not clear from the question the basis on which your son was originally employed with the co-op.

If it was a fixed-term contract, which is a contract that ends on an agreed date (it can be for a number of months or even more) or a specific-purpose contract, which is one that normally ends when a specific task is finished, then the short answer is you cannot be employed on a series of fixed term contracts indefinitely.

In fact, you cannot be kept on successive fixed term contracts for more than four years. After that period has expired, and if your son’s employer wanted him to remain in the job, they should have employed him. This could either have been an open ended contract or a permanent contract.

Fixed-term workers have the same rights as other employees. The same goes for part-time workers. Fixed-term employees must be notified of training and vacancies to allow them the same opportunity to secure a permanent position as other employees. This does not extend as far as giving the fixed term worker a permanent vacancy – the obligation is to ensure that they are notified of permanent vacancies within the company.

Any complaint under the Protection of Employees (fixed-term work) Act 2003 must be made within six months of the dispute or issue taking place. The time period can be extended for a further six months if there is a reasonable cause which prevented your son from bringing the complaint forward within the initial time period. A complaint under this act would be brought before the Workplace Relations Commission.

When you say your son was passed over for two permanent jobs within the co-op, I’m assuming that he applied for these roles and was not successful.

Was he given feedback as to why he wasn’t successful? If he felt that there was discrimination (under one of the nine grounds of discrimination), then he could possibly have a claim under the Employment Equality Acts. Again, in general the time limit for bringing these complaints forward is within six months of the alleged discrimination taking place.

It’s important if you have a grievance at work – in your son’s case, being passed over for permanent roles – that this is brought to your employer’s attention by using the company’s grievance procedure.

A grievance would normally be raised on an informal basis first, and if there was no resolution or your son was not happy with the outcome, it could be raised as a formal grievance.

It can be quite difficult to succeed in any case before either the courts or the Workplace Commission if you cannot show that you brought the issue to your employer’s attention in the first place and gave them an opportunity to resolve the issue.

It’s not clear when your son left his employment, but it appears that the actions of his employer –by repeatedly passing him over for permanency – were a deciding factor.

A constructive dismissal is where your employer’s action or inaction makes the situation in work so intolerable that you feel that you have no option but to resign.

He could bring a claim for constructive dismissal under the Unfair Dismissal Act, but to succeed in such a claim your son would have to prove that resigning was an option of last resort and that he had exhausted all of the company’s complaint and grievance procedures first. Your son would have to prove that his resignation was justified – that he had good reason to leave.

This is different from an unfair dismissal case, where the onus is on the employer to prove that there were fair grounds for the dismissal. Again, a claim for constructive dismissal must be taken within six months from the date your son’s job ended to the Workplace Relations Commission.

If your son’s case was successful, he could be awarded compensation for his loss of earnings, placed back in his job under either reinstatement (taken back and re-employed as if he had never been constructively dismissed) or alternatively, re-engagement (taken back and re-employed, but not necessarily on the same terms).

There are a couple of options open to your son, but there are very tight timelines to pursue a claim. Consequently, I would advise him to contact a solicitor that specialises in employment law as soon as possible, to ensure that he does not fall foul of the time limits.

Disclaimer: The information in this article is intended as a general guide only. While every care is taken to ensure accuracy of information contained in this article, Aisling Meehan, Agricultural Solicitors and Tax Consultants does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions howsoever arising. E-mail aisling@agrisolicitors.ie