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A STATE WORKPLACE watchdog has recommended that a hotel pay €7,000 compensation to a waiter over unpaid tips and for his unfair dismissal.
In the case, Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) Adjudicator, Catherine Byrne stated the worker said that he was suspended for making a complaint over unpaid tips and his wages were stopped.
Ms Byrne stated: “While he could have raised a grievance before he resigned, it seems to me that, based on how he was treated for making a complaint about the distribution of tips, his efforts to raise a grievance would have met with little success.”
Ms Byrne stated: “I accept that the worker had to leave his job, and I note the failure of the employer to respond to this claim.”
In her anonymised determination, Ms Byrne stated that the worker said that he received more in tips than he earned in wages and the employer did not contradict the worker’s version of events.
Ms Byrne stated that the worker’s payslips show that, before he was suspended, he earned an average of €500 per week.
Ms Byrne stated: “At a minimum, if he served 10 tables a day and if he was paid €10 by each table, it is reasonable to assume that he earned around €500 per week in tips.
Ms Byrne stated that the payslips submitted by the employer show that the worker was employed by them for 16 weeks in 2023, from week 12 until week 28.
She said: “If he had received the tips which he claims he was given by customers, he would have received €8,000. Based on a generally accepted practice that tips are shared with kitchen staff, I estimate that the worker would have taken home around €5,000 in tips.”
The waiter commenced working in the employer’s hotel in the midlands in March 2023. He had worked for an associated business in the south of Ireland since October 3rd 2022.
The man earned €12.50 per hour and €13.50 per hour for working on Sundays.
The employer was represented by Mr Danny Ryan BL and the employer’s head of human resources also attended the hearing but Mr Ryan told Ms Byrne that he would not be responding to the worker’s claims on behalf of his client.
At the hearing of this dispute, the worker said that the restaurant in the hotel where he worked was very busy, serving up to 200 people most days.
Represented by solicitor, Susan Doyle of SMD Solicitors in the case, the waiter said that customers were generous with tips and that, if he had retained the tips given to him, he would have made more than he earned in his weekly wages.
He said that he was instructed to hand over all the tips he received in cash. The worker said that he wrote to the HR manager of the company and he complained that he wasn’t getting his tips.
He said that he was called in by the general manager and threatened that he would only be rostered for one or two hours a week. He said that the manager also threatened to dismiss him.
Following his complaint to the company’s head office, the worker said that he was given €49 in tips and a few weeks later, he received €100.
He said that this is a small fraction of the thousands of euros that he received in tips when he worked in the hotel.
At the hearing, the worker said that he looked for information about how tips should be distributed to employees and, in April 2023, he got advice from the Department of Enterprise and Employment.
He said that, in accordance with the advice, he looked for a statement from his employer about the amount of tips received in the restaurant.
He said that his request was initially refused, and then he got a statement. He said that the statement only included the value of two months’ tips. The worker did not provide this statement at the hearing.
The worker said that his suspension from work is another form of abuse and that it was intended to get him to resign. In the end, he said that he did resign. He said that he had to leave because his employer stopped paying his wages.
In her findings, Ms Byrne stated the employer produced no information to indicate that a notice is displayed in the hotel restaurant that shows how frequently tips are distributed to staff, if they are paid in cash or through wages and the proportion of the tips given to each category of employees.
As part of her recommendation, Ms Byrne has recommended that to avoid similar disputes in the future that the employer gives serious consideration to the obligations regarding tips and gratuities set out in The Payment of Wages (Amendment) (Tips and Gratuities) Act 2022.
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Why do they have to wait until the busiest weekends to do the work on the train lines? Could they not do that work at night during the week days and have it ready to bring people here and there during bank holidays?
@David Corrigan: They already do a lot of work at night, but for some work a 6 hour window is just not long enough, I presume. If it takes 2 hours to replace a gearbox you can’t do it in 4 separate bursts of 30 minutes.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: But they try and fit all the repairs into a 3 day weekend instead of doing it on a 5 day week. Kinda blows your theory out the window, eh?
@David Corrigan: No, they frequently work around the clock. A few years ago a small bridge needed replacing near my brother’s house. August bank holiday, they started at about 7.00pm on Friday and worked through, with floodlights, and finished about 4.00pm on the bank holiday Monday. Virtually 60 hours continuous work, in shifts. The bridge soan itself was gone for about 36 hours as the replaced the anchorage and supports. This type if work needs a large and continuous chunk of time, and can’t be done in a standard 9 to 5 day. So a decision us taken to disrupt ‘leisure’ traffic over a bank holiday rather than the working hours of 10s of 1000s of commuters during a working week. Some people may not like that decision, but you can’t please everybody. A shorter time disrupting fewer people.
@David Corrigan: One line closure over the weekend by Iarnrod Eireann on the Belfast line. And one closure by NIR (makes sense to do both works at the same time).
Being a regular traveller on that line, I can tell you it is a lot busier during the week than it will ever be on any weekend.
People complain these lines should be electrified and upgraded. But when a push comes to shove they don’t want the inconvenience. I’d say expect a lot more of this over the next couple of years as electrification and infrastructure upgrades are brought in.
@David Corrigan: It’s three days where it’s not busy with commuter traffic. Disrupting the majority of people on days off is better than disrupting them and businesses for work commutes I assume is the logic
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: why do all these repairs specifically this weekend? These problems didn’t arise overnight, if they checked as they should, they should have prevented any possible fault before the fault happened, it’s called prevention.
You don’t wait until an airplane engine fails for you to repair it, it has mandatory service and diagnosis after a certain amount of time. the same goes for rail infrastructure. The fact that they had to repair them after they broke means that they didn’t check and keep track of them before so they can do a planned repair maintenance instead of a reactionary repair. That’s the problem
@J Ven: The bridge hadn’t broken. It hadn’t fallen. It was checked and deemed to need replacing. The continual repairs over the previous 100+ years were not enough anymore. So…… it was replaced. And it was decided to cause minimum disruption be doing it at a weekend where fewest people use it. (Am I correct in saying that every track is ‘walked’ and checked at least once a week??).
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: how do other countries with 24/7 public transport manage their infrastructure maintenance without huge interruptions? Why is public transport here in Ireland treated as the ugly stepchild and not given adequate priority and funding? It’s beyond a joke that there’s only one North-South line on the east coast of this Ireland. It seems the motto is “Ah sure, it’s grand, who’d need alternatives, they have one railway, they should be happy”
@Larissa Caroline Nikolaus: Entire London tube lines are closed periodically. Entire stations closed.
@David Corrigan: The figures show that the least amount of customers are affected if they use weekends including bank holidays.
@J Ven: These are upgrades to the lines. As part of Dart + and the new Enterprise services to and from Belfast.
@Larissa Caroline Nikolaus: They do exactly the same as Irish Rail and close likes and stations at weekends particularly bank holiday weekends.
@Larissa Caroline Nikolaus: Cities like London have multiple lines going to most areas the way the web of lines are built. So closing one section isn’t as big a deal as here. Iarnrod Eireann and their contractors can only manage what they have. If you need extra lines and major upgrades well then that’s government infrastructure nation development plans, etc. So talk to your local TD. I’m sure he/she will oblige.
That’s like saying the Road Haulage truck driver people should be building new motorways.
It’s obvious from some of the comments here that project management and logistics are not strong points of some journal readers.
@Fr. Fintan Stack: Neither are they strong points amongst the people who manage public transport here in Ireland. Or it wouldn’t be the misery it is
@Larissa Caroline Nikolaus: hmmm. I’d be interested to hear how you would manage say a piece of work that requires 40 hours work, like replacing track sections or upgrading or replacing singling infrastructure.
@Larissa Caroline Nikolaus: They are very effective in Irish Rail considering the hoops they have to jump through.
That would be two easy to do day are brain dead in this country full stop ✋️
@Alan Moloney: says the man who can’t spell….
@Alan Moloney: says the lad who cant even spell correctly…..prime example of the brain dead here folks!
@Tom Newell: your one yourself
@6gRrQtLn: we are very funny today
@Alan Moloney: “You’re” or “you are” not “your”.
@Tom Newell: your one of them
@Eamon: what
Fair enough that works need to be done, but then provide viable alternatives and not a “limited” bus service
@Larissa Caroline Nikolaus: A limited bus service in conjunction which the regular bus service.
having had to do bus transfers before, there are enough buses for all the passengers.
Sadly the transfers by bus were caused by sad events and had nothing to do with Irish Rail.
Typical and typically.
We apologize for the convenience caused, due to technical difficulties…
God , I remember that deadly statement at least twice a week a decade ago… I bet that did not change.
Why are we not allowed comment on the contraversal issues?
Car share to minimise emissions, at an air display, PC BS. All the Best.
I hope they have a stealth fighter jet
This seems to happen regularly over bank holiday weekends, nearly yearly, massive overtime for all involved, Do we have an emergency Bus network reserved for these occurrences, or are buses taken from regular routes, depriving, regular bus passenger’s of their services.
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