Ms. Finnegan Advises That She Commenced Working As A Typist In Exceptional Solicitors: Employment Law Assignment, UCD, Ireland

Assignment Specification

You are a legal adviser to Holly Finnegan. Ms. Finnegan advises that she commenced working as a typist in Exceptional Solicitors (hereinafter “the Firm”) in January 2010 where her duties included typing, filing, taking dictation, printing, and preparing the post for the solicitors in the Firm.

There was another secretary who did the administrative and accounting work. When Ms. Finnegan started with the Firm, had just two partners and two associates but since October 2015 the Firm expanded and to three partners and six associates and it began taking Ms. Finnegan much longer to do her job. She reports that her pay never changed from €400/week when she was doing four hours per day (Monday to Friday) but that since 2015, even without taking a break she always had to work at least ten hours every day (Monday to Friday) in order to get the work done.

Ms. Finnegan says that when she went into work on 1st March 2021, the managing partner had called her in and said that it had been decided that as she had recently turned 65 she was to finish up work at the end of the month. Ms. Finnegan said that she was shocked and was not able to respond at the time. She reports that she is the sole guardian for her two grandchildren and had re-mortgaged her house to pay off her daughter’s debts before her daughter died so that she cannot afford to give up work. She does not understand what difference her age makes as she is perfectly able to do the job.

She had never missed a day at work due to illness and neither had she taken any holidays over the past two years because there was nobody else in the company who was qualified as a legal secretary so there cannot have been an issue with her ability to perform her role. She knows that Bob, who works in security, and Fred, who works in the canteen, are both over 65 as is Gerry in the accounts department and no one has told them they had to leave. The new partner and the associates were all young and she was sure they just wanted someone younger and trendier than she was to do the work. She often heard really rude comments about her being an “old dear” and about the image of the firm “needing to change”.

When she had time to gather her thoughts, Ms. Finnegan says that she went to see the head of HR to see if there was anything that could be done for her. She says that things went from bad to worse in that meeting as the head of HR, Ms. Jones, told her that it was nothing to do with the firm as Ms. Finnegan was not an employee of the Firm. Ms. Jones said that she only joined the company the previous year but that as far as she was concerned Ms. Finnegan was self-employed because she invoiced her charges to the Firm every month and was not paid through payroll.

By the time Ms. Finnegan came to see you one week later, she was distraught. She could not understand how she could be self-employed. She only worked at the Firm, she reported to the Managing Partner and worked for all the other solicitors at the Firm, her equipment was provided by the Firm, she even had a swipe card with the Firm’s logo on it that she used when she was getting in and out of the building.

Ms. Finnegan says that when she started work she was told to send an invoice at the end of every month because at that time the Managing Partner said he did not want it to look as though they had too many administrative staff in proportion to fee-earning solicitors. Nobody told her to stop sending invoices and she knows she was not on payroll but she had spoken with the Revenue Commissioners and she made her returns without claiming any business expenses as though she were an employed person.

Ms. Finnegan said that she never got a contract of employment from the Firm even though she asked regularly. The Managing Partner who hired her was long gone and had since died so she could not even get him to confirm the situation.