The Workplace Relations Commission ordered Metropolitan Films International Limited to pay stagehand Eddie Arkins Snr €25,000 after finding he was penalised for seeking permanent employment. It also awarded him €5,000 for failures to provide objective reasons for successive fixed-term contracts and a written statement of those reasons.
In a decision dated 15 December 2023, adjudication officer Catherine Byrne found that Arkins had worked intermittently for the company and its associated production businesses for 15 years. The breaks between productions were periods of lay-off, so his service was continuous. After a production ended in June 2018, he was not called back when work resumed, and the officer found his dismissal took effect on 1 December 2019.
The officer found that Arkins had acquired a contract of indefinite duration after working on successive fixed-term contracts for more than four years. That means his employment had become permanent in nature. She found the company penalised him when his efforts to invoke his rights to permanent employment resulted in his dismissal. She also found there was no legitimate objective for employing him on successive specified-purpose contracts and that the company failed to give him a written statement setting out the reasons for doing so.