A seamstress treated “shabbily” by her employer of 17 years when she was subjected to a purported mandatory retirement just four months after turning down a full-time job elsewhere has won over €76,000. Carr Sewing Machines Limited was ordered to pay the sum to Mary Kenneally as redress for unfair dismissal and further employment rights breaches in a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) decision published on Monday. Kenneally told the employment tribunal she was 67 years old and had worked for around 17 years at the “Singers” alterations shop on Washington Street in Cork City when she was told her work week was to be cut in 2024. She said she used to work three days a week for the respondent and two days elsewhere, but gave up the other post to work a four-day week in July 2023. The following summer, she was told the firm was going to “bring in someone else” and cut her back to a three-day week. Kenneally said her employer brought in a number of Ukrainian women with “very little English” to work as seamstresses and directed staff to “go on the phone and use Google Translate to communicate”. She said she found this “difficult”. A supporting witness, shop manager Marie McCarthy, gave evidence that she objected to the cut to Kenneally’s hours. She added that she had told the owner around four months before Kenneally’s job was terminated that the complainant had been offered a full-time job elsewhere. She said the owner told her in November, 2024 that Ms Kenneally was “going in December”. “Everyone was very upset,” she said. The tribunal noted a letter to the owner signed by the shop staff stating that they were “deeply upset and very unhappy at the forced resignation” of Kenneally. The complainant’s employment was terminated on 12th December, 2024, the tribunal noted. In legal correspondence, the company relied on “an alleged mandatory retirement age” for terminating the employment, the tribunal noted. Kenneally had told the tribunal that when she later went back to the company that had offered her a full-time job, all the management was able to offer was one day a week. She decided not to take up the one day a week because of the commute and extra expenses. She told the WRC she wanted to work “as long as I had my health”, but did not think it would be easy to find a new job in her circumstances. The employer was represented by the liquidator appointed to Carr Sewing Machines Limited, Gerard Murphy.Adjudicator Emile Daly noted that while the facts were not contested, liability was denied. Daly upheld Kenneally’s complaint under the Unfair Dismissal Act 1977 and awarded her €67,000 in compensation for the breach. She wrote that Kenneally had been an “excellent and long-standing employee” who was treated “exceptionally shabbily” by the firm. She made a finding of fact that there was no mandatory retirement age in operation at the business. It was “particularly egregious” that Kenneally “lost out on a full-time job opportunity elsewhere due to the conduct of her employer”, Daly added as she assessed the level of redress due. Further awards of compensation totalling €9,481 for breaches of the Payment of Wages Act 1991, the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994, and the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 brought the total awarded to Ms Kenneally in the case to €76,491.