Brendan Ogle’s wife says she posted on Facebook accusing the Unite trade union of sidelining her husband at work after his cancer treatment in an attempt to head off any “trolling” from council water workers who she claims were upset he was “silent” on an industrial agreement they opposed.
Mandy La Combre told the Workplace Relations Commission this morning: “When he returned, I thought everything was going to be okay, and it wasn’t,” she said.
Her husband had told her he was “not being included in this” and “taken out of that”, Ms La Combre said, adding: “you’d expect better” of a trade union job.
“You see your partner suffering through cancer, four and a half stone lighter, liquidating food and feeding them, thinking they’re going to die – it was very traumatising for us as a couple,” she said.
She said there was much public comment being made on social media on the weekend of 11 September 2022 following a deal struck on a transfer of undertakings – with some criticism that workers had not been balloted on the measures.
“People were actually saying: ‘Where’s Ogle?’, ‘Ogle’s gone quiet,’ ‘Where’s Ogle now?'” Ms La Combre said.
She said she feared a repeat of the “trolling” she said had occurred around the time of the occupation of Apollo House by housing activists some years earlier and that she decided she wanted to “put it to bed”.
In the post, which was submitted to the tribunal in evidence, Ms La Combre wrote: “What I have sadly come to learn is that [Unite] don’t appear to be as happy as I am that he recovered.”
Ms La Combre then referred to an alleged attempt to move her husband to a reduced role in Dundalk and a claim that he had been “frozen out of staff and activist meetings and key communications on major issues”.
The WRC heard that during a speech to a trade union conference in Malahide, Co Dublin later that month, the trade union’s former chairman, Tony Woodhouse, referred to “the lies that were being told” about Unite on social media, and stated: “Officers returning from sick leave are always treated in the most perfect manner.”
The tribunal heard Mr Ogle subsequently issued legal proceedings against Mr Woodhouse over the speech, telling the WRC earlier this year the ex-chairman “targeted – and following advice I can state defamed me – at the biennial conference”.
The union’s position, put to Mr Ogle’s during cross-examination, was that the “differences” between the parties stemmed from coverage of his wife’s Facebook post in the Irish Examiner.
Mark Harty SC, for Unite, put it to Ms La Combre that her Facebook post had amounted to a “hand grenade” and asked her whether she thought it had been “ill-advised” in the context of a process of “working out” matters around her husband’s return to work.
“I don’t believe there was any process of trying to work [things] out,” she replied.
Asked how the Irish Examiner journalist Mick Clifford had her contact details, she said: “I’m a senior officer in another union. All my contact details are public.”
The respondent’s case has now opened, with Mr Ogle’s former line manager, Jackie Pollock, giving evidence this afternoon.
Mr Ogle is pursuing a complaint of discrimination in relation to access to employment, the failure to provide reasonable accommodation, victimisation and harassment following his return to work following a “very aggressive” cancer in 2022.
This morning it was also confirmed that Mr Ogle’s lawyers have failed in an attempt to have the Unite general secretary Sharon Graham summoned as a witness in the case.
Adjudicating officer Elizabeth Spelman ruled that Ms Graham did not have information relevant to her inquiry.
