Abbott must pay €25,000 to scientist with endometriosis ‘humiliated’ by dismissal

A scientist who said she tried to push through “excruciating” endometriosis pain while driving up to four hours a day for work for pharma giant Abbott – only to be “humiliated” when she was dismissed during her probationary period, has won €25,000.

The worker, who has over a decade of industry experience and advanced postgraduate qualifications, told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) last year she was given just 10 minutes to pick up her things and get off site after being told she failed her probation.

She said she was reduced to “crying all the way back” in a colleague’s arms during the drive home.

Abbott Ireland Ltd has been ordered to pay the worker €25,000 as compensation for discriminatory dismissal on disability grounds in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998.

The worker, X, was hired by Abbott in 2024 and spent just short of six months working in an office at an Abbott site in a county town analysing test data, but was deemed to have failed her probation and was let go that autumn, the tribunal heard.

The company’s representative, Fiona Egan of the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (Ibec), submitted that X failed her probation for “conduct and performance” following a number of instances of lateness and uncertified absences from work.

It had “nothing to do with her condition”, she said.

British Ambassador to Ireland Kara Owen on current Anglo-Irish relations, trade opportunities, and the possibility of a Brexit reversal

Listen |

39:03

Shaun Boylan, appearing for X instructed by Sean Ormonde & Co Solicitors, said the firm’s policy of refusing to allow probationary employees to work from home was “implicitly discriminatory” against his client, as it put accommodations for her disability “on hold for six months”.

X, who was afforded anonymity by the WRC at a hearing last year, said she had been diagnosed with stage 2 endometriosis in 2022, a condition affecting the female reproductive organs.

She said it causes her “debilitating pain”, accompanied by “nausea, fainting and dizziness” which was at its worst during the seven to eight days of her period and required prescription-only codeine and opiate painkillers to manage.

The daily drive from X’s home to the Abbott site was “coming up on a four-hour commute to work every day”, adjudication officer Brian Dolan remarked during the hearings on her case.

X said she thought at first she should “just endure” the commute. Her evidence was that she was “promised in the interview that it would be a hybrid role” and that she turned down roles elsewhere with a five-day-a-week on-site commitment because of that.

Six weeks after she started, a “sudden” departmentwide meeting was called and a manager declared “there would be no more work from home possible” at the site, barring the “possibility” of one day a week, she said.

X said she was in “excruciating pain” that day and found the message “difficult to take”. She told the commission she went straight to her team leader “in visible distress, with tears in my eyes” and proceeded to tell him she had endometriosis.

She said her team leader was “empathetic” and “supportive” at that stage and gave her an assurance that a “one week in, one week out” work from home arrangement would be possible – but only once her probation was finished.

Making it in for an on-site team meeting at 9.30am meant setting out from home at 6.30am or 6.45am, X said.

Over seven weeks before a probationary caution letter being issued in her final weeks on the job, Ms X was late eight times and absent without a medical cert on three occasions, leading to an occupational health referral.

X said a senior manager told her at one stage: “The company cannot offer more than one day work from home past your probation,” and urged her to find somewhere to live closer to the site.

An occupational health report which went to her line manager two weeks before she lost her job stated that the complainant had a chronic condition and urged a two-day-a-week remote work arrangement, the tribunal noted.

The probation review continued into the following month, ending when her team leader called her into a conference room and read out a letter stating that her employment was being terminated, she said.

The only reason stated was: “Your standard of performance has not met company expectations.”

“I asked why. [My team leader] said: ‘Everything is in the letter,’” X said.

After saying she could not continue with the meeting, a company human resources (HR) officer told her an outstanding pay matter could be handled by email and gave her “ten minutes to leave, to grab [my] stuff and leave the premises”.

“Everyone was crying in the car,” she said. “I hugged my colleague, [Ms Y] in the car, and kept crying all the way back to Dublin,” she added.

Questioned on why she had not disclosed her condition in a pre-employment questionnaire, X said she was “scared to be discriminated against” by having the job offer withdrawn.

She said she had disclosed her diagnosis to a company nurse at a separate assessment 10 days into her employment but said expressly that she did not require accommodations to work in a lab.

In his decision, adjudicator Brian Dolan concluded that Abbott did not discriminate against X by failing to accommodate her disability during her employment.

However, despite the occupational health report linking her absences to her health, the pharma firm dismissed her without “further consideration” of her disability or how to resolve the matter without a termination.

“I find that the complainant’s dismissal constituted an act of discrimination on the grounds of disability,” he wrote.

He ordered Abbott to pay X €25,000 in compensation.