Employee to receive thousands in 'distress compensation'

The man was operating a digger for Graeme Wright Transport Ltd. Photo . iStock

A decades-long employee of a transport firm will receive thousands in "distress compensation" after he was made redundant.

John Lowe worked for Graeme Wright Transport Ltd for more than 20 years until the eponymous boss decided to dispense with his services in October 2012.

By that stage Mr Lowe was operating a digger for the business, based in Puriri, near Thames. Work for the digger was drying up.

Mr Wright was visiting the workshops one day when a co-worker told him Mr Lowe refused to do truck driving duties.

Mr Wright spoke to Mr Lowe and said he told him "this isn't working" and that he offered to sell him the digger and support him with contract work.

Mr Lowe, however, said he was told: "I am making you redundant. It is uneconomic to run the machine. I'm giving you three weeks' notice."

After a hearing in Hamilton last month, the Employment Relations Authority today issued a decision awarding Mr Lowe $14,000 "compensation for hurt and humiliation suffered by him".

Authority member Anna Fitzgibbon reduced the original award of $15,000 by $1000 because Mr Lowe breached "obligations of good faith" when he touted for work for his new employer on Wright Transport time. Mr Lowe started work for his new boss immediately after he left Wright Transport.

Ms Fitzgibbon ruled, however, Mr Lowe's dismissal was not for genuine reasons of redundancy.

"It is my view that a fair an reasonable employer could not in his circumstances determine that to reduce costs, Mr Lowe's position was to be made redundant," Ms Fitzgibbon said.

"Mr Lowe correctly, in my view, points to mixed or ulterior motives, namely his performance, which played a part in his dismissal for redundancy."

The termination left him upset, he told the authority.

"After 20 years of working for the same person, you develop a relationship with them. I have known Graeme since I was a small boy," Mr Lowe said.

"I feel a real sense of loss in the way Graeme has treated me ... I felt I lost a lot more than a job when Graeme terminated my employment."

Mr Wright wasn't at work on Mr Lowe's last day. There was no offer of a reference and no farewell function.

"Mr Lowe says this was very upsetting given his long period of service for Mr Wright and Wright Transport," Ms Fitzgibbon said.

Mr Wright's lawyer accepted there was inadequate consultation about the redundancy, but told the authority Mr Wright, who had been in business 48 years, treated staff in "an old fashioned way".

The authority heard he had sometimes loaned Mr Lowe money and let him off a $500 debt when he left the firm. Mr Wright had also never made anyone redundant before.