The Welsh National Opera unfairly laid off a long-serving worker who struggled to read and write. A judge found the Cardiff Bay-based opera company failed to offer support for John Hayel to apply for a new role when he faced redundancy.
Mr Hayel, aged 66 when laid off in 2021, had worked for the WNO since 1974. Without ever writing a memo or email, he had risen to the position of master carpenter and head of stage crew. He believed he was dyslexic, although his photographic memory helped hide his reading difficulties. Sometimes he would take a document to the bathroom and try to work out its meaning from the words he recognised.
He was among 12 stage crew members to bring unfair dismissal and age discrimination complaints against the WNO after a restructure. Judge Rachel Harfield found the company had fairly made 11 of the workers redundant — but she said "any reasonable line manager" would have offered support for Mr Hayel to apply for the new head of staging role given his literacy issues.
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The employment tribunal also heard claims that the WNO, based at Wales Millennium Centre, wasted "hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money" through poor decision-making and "building massive sets that were never used". The company denied these allegations. Its spokesperson added that new procedures have been put in place since the judge ruled Mr Hayel was unfairly dismissed.
Although Mr Hayel has never been formally diagnosed as dyslexic, the tribunal heard he left school being called "illiterate" which made him feel ashamed. Judge Harfield said: "At some point in his career he tried to go to night school at City Road in Cardiff to get help with his reading. The person running the course told him he was not illiterate, and she thought he might be dyslexic. It was the first time he had heard that word and it sounded a better word. He could recall her saying he seemed like a clever person to her. He could not continue with the course as he was away touring, so he carried on with the way he was living his life before."
She added: "His reading is limited. He can look at a statement or a memo and pick out a word he understands and then try to work out roughly what it all means."
Mr Hayel's photographic memory meant he could remember every piece of scenery from the operas performed over the years. He did not want colleagues to know about his literacy problem but suspected some of them did know and helped him.
"Sometimes he would take a document away, go to the toilet, and try to work it out from the words he could recognise," said Judge Harfield. "One of his coping strategies was to also take things home with him and get his wife to read them out to him. With the advent of smartphones, he was then able to take a photograph and send it to his wife and she could call him and talk to him about it.
"Mr Hayel knew the crew’s schedules and people would talk to him about the schedules every day and he knew what they should look like. But he could not write a schedule out, someone else always did that... He knew how to do a risk assessment but could not put one down on paper... He tended to work with the same forms and documents day in and day out which he had learned through repetition."
The restructure involved a new head of staging role that would include report-writing and budget preparation. Judge Harfield found that Mr Hayel's line manager, the technical director Jan Michaelis, knew he had "more than minor" literacy issues. The tribunal heard Mr Hayel was "expecting Mr Michaelis to say it would be OK as Mr Michaelis would help him as he had done in the past".
The judge said: "Mr Michaelis was faced with an incredibly long standing member of staff whom he had built that relationship of confidence with... It was outside of the range of reasonable responses for Mr Michaelis not to have had that express conversation with Mr Hayel to say that if he wanted to apply for head of staging, there potentially could be that process of Mr Hayel going for an assessment of his condition, and getting further assessments to see what support could be provided and funded... We do consider it is a discussion any reasonable line manager in Mr Michaelis’ position would have had."
Mr Hayel, who was described by the judge as a "capable, intelligent, thoughtful individual", opted for redundancy because he feared his payment would be halved if he did not take it voluntarily. Although the judge found his dismissal was unfair, she believed he would not have applied for the new job even if he had been offered support.
She rejected claims from Mr Hayel and his colleague Constantinous "Tarki" Micallef — a former Cardiff City footballer — that they had been made redundant for blowing the whistle on concerns over management. They had alleged that the WNO breached public funding conditions from the Arts Council of Wales and that there was "significant wastage" when the company built a set too big for touring. The WNO denied this and said there were no conditions attached to the spending of grant money.
Judge Harfield found that whistle-blowing was not the reason for the workers being dismissed and that the actual reason for this was redundancy. She also rejected claims of age discrimination and said: "We are satisfied that the respondent’s restructuring exercise was genuine, and the respondent was genuinely seeking to make, for business reasons, the changes they were seeking to make. We do not find that it was, for example, a sham restructuring exercise designed to secure the exit of Mr Micallef and Mr Hayel (or other claimants) because of the raising of protected disclosures."
There was no hearing for damages because the WNO reached a settlement with Mr Hayel over his unfair dismissal. The company's spokesperson said: “The [restructure] process was carried out in consultation with the unions and in accordance with employment law. We accepted the ruling of the judge in the case of the individual involved in the successful claim. Procedures have been put in place as a result and a resolution reached with the individual.”
Last year the WNO confirmed it would no longer travel to perform in Liverpool because of cuts to public funding. The company said the annual grant from Arts Council England had dropped by 35% (£2.2million). The WNO receives funding from the arts councils of both England and Wales.
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