A consultant chef has won €10,000 in compensation from a start-up pizza restaurant even as he lost his pay and unfair dismissal claims against the business.
Kristian Burness secured the compensation for employment law breaches found by the Workplace Relations Commission on pay and working time on foot of multiple statutory complaints against Chickopee Foods Ltd, trading as the Nero XVII pizzeria in Dublin 7.
Giving preliminary evidence in an inquiry into the tribunal’s jurisdiction to hear his complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, Mr Burness said he “helped to set up Nero XVII with the respondent” in October 2019 and received €850 a week in cash.
Company director John O’Neill denied any such alleged arrangement.
Mr Burness said he was placed on payroll from the start of July 2020 with “no explanation” from the firm — stating that he “continued to work in the restaurant” up to this point.
Mr Burness said he was dismissed “without any explanation” on May 21st, 2021.
Mr O’Neill told the tribunal he was “not at liberty” to disclose the reason for dismissing Mr Burness.
Adjudicating officer Catherine Byrne examined the complainant’s bank statements and noted multiple payments from the firm, but “no evidence” of any agreement to pay wages in cash from November 2019 to June 2020, when he went on payroll.
“The evidence given by both sides in relation to the complainant’s employment status could best be described as economical,” wrote Ms Byrne in her decision. She rejected the complaint under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 claiming an unlawful pay cut from this point onward and found she had no jurisdiction to open Mr Burness’s complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977.
No premiums
No working time records were produced by the company at the hearing to rebut Mr Burness’s claims that he was not afforded shift breaks, with Ms Murphy awarding him €2,612 for a breach of the Organisation of Working Time Act.
She wrote that the payslips submitted in evidence showed Mr Burness had not received any premium for Sunday work in breach of the working time legislation, and ordered that the complainant be paid €28.50 for each of the 40 Sundays he worked, 25 per cent of his day’s pay, totalling €1,200.
Ms Murphy also noted Mr Burness had not been paid for annual leave, or been compensated for public holidays in further working time breaches, and ordered €2,612 for annual leave pay and €966 for the public holidays.
Mr Burness had also stated that he never received the required written statements of the terms and conditions of his employment within the required statutory deadline of five days and two months, which his barrister argued brought the firm into breach of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 on two counts.
These were not disputed by the company, with the tribunal awarding €1,305 on each count.
A third employment terms claim alleging that the restaurant’s switch to takeaways during the pandemic had eroded his conditions was rejected as “not well founded”.
The total orders against the firm came to €10,000.
