Couple sacked by Caldey monks (From Western Telegraph)

Couple sacked by Caldey monks

A married couple who cooked and sewed for the community of monks on Caldey Island were sacked because their salaries threatened the financial future of the monastery.

Brother Robert O'Brien, the island's former abbot, claimed Andrew and Sally McHardy were made redundant because their jobs should have been done by the monks in the first place.

But the McHardys, who were given a month to quit their island home and a four-week redundancy package, insisted employment law was breached and on Friday won their case for unfair dismissal.

Seventy-one-year-old Brother Robert gave evidence on the first day of an industrial tribunal at Carmarthen, because the Reformed Cistercian Order only observes a strict vow of silence between 7pm and 7am.

The McHardys were made redundant after the Caldey Abbey Trust, a charity set up to manage the affairs of the island, was warned it faced insolvency within five years if it did not draw up a business plan to cut costs.

"We were under considerable pressure by the charity commissioner to explain how we were managing the trust. We were not making a profit,'' said Brother Robert.

There was also a suggestion that donations made to the Abbey were being used to fund Mr McHardy's drinking habit.

"I still don't think there was any wrong doing, but the guests did wonder, as did others in the community, how Mr McHardy could afford to pay for the alcohol he was undoubtedly consuming,'' said Brother Robert.

The issue was of particular concern because two members of the community had received counselling by Alcoholics Anonymous for their own drinking problems, he explained. The monks gave the couple a £1,000 cash gift as an 'act of friendship' when their redundancies were announced.

The two-day hearing was told that the McHardys were given just ten minutes notice of the redundancies.

Tribunal chairman Roger Jones said the panel thought the procedure should have been more sensitively applied.

"The manner of the meeting in which they were told of the decision left a lot to be desired,'' he said.

Brother Robert hoped he could remain friends with the McHardys. "I don't understand why Mr McHardy is speaking with anger and a sense of grievance when we had agreed to part as friends,'' he said.

The tribunal ruled that the McHardys had been unfairly dismissed and the compensation owed to the couple will be calculated in the next two weeks.

The island's spiritual leader, the Abbot, Father Daniel van Santvoort, was not at the tribunal because he was attending a celebration feast to mark the 76th anniversary of Caldey Abbey and Epiphany.

The Reformed Cistercian Order, which vows to live modestly and to obey, has inhabited the island since the start of the 20th century.

The number of monks has diminished to 14.