A former ice-cream parlour worker who says she had to put in 90 hours a week at times has told a tribunal that her hours were so long her baby son did not recognise her by the time her employment ended.
Romanian national and mother of two Anita Popa, who worked at the Melt ice-cream parlour on the Trim Road in Navan, Co Meath, up to May last year, said she found herself working from 7.30am until 10.30pm and did not see her children awake.
“My baby had one year, and he don’t know me; he don’t know to say ‘mama’,” she told the Workplace Relations Commission on Thursday.
Her barrister, Lars Asmussen, submitted that his client’s boss once called her “the perfect machine who takes care of anything”.
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He has stated that “reams of reams of fabricated documents” have been produced by Melt Gelato Ltd in response to a series of alleged employment rights breaches.
Denying the complaints on behalf of the company, Billy Wall of Peninsula Business Services said Ms Popa “was paid for the hours she did work” and that the allegations of 60-90-hour weeks were “a total fabrication of the truth”.
Giving evidence, Ms Popa said she approached the respondent seeking work in April, 2021, starting as a cleaner.
She described working 12 hours a day from 9am to 9pm in the parlour when things got busy. From April, 2022, Ms Popa said, her hours extended to 15 hours a day as the respondent opened a cafe next door.
The firm’s case was that Ms Popa never worked there in 2021 and only started in 2022. That was disputed in evidence by the worker, who noted WhatsApp messages and photographs from June of that year onwards that she said referred to her employment.
When the respondent’s roster documents were shown to Ms Popa, she said repeatedly that they were “fake” and that the initials “A.P.” which appeared on them were not her signature.
Mr Asmussen submitted that his client was only being paid for 19 hours via payroll with sporadic cash top-ups of up to €100 per week, leaving her underpaid by €445 to €545 a week for the alleged hours worked, in breach of the Payment of Wages Act.
“We refute that,” said Mr Wall of the wages complaint.
In addition to complaints under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 and the wage claims, Ms Popa is also pursuing the firm for alleged breaches of the Terms of Employment Act 1994, the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, the Maternity Protection Act 1994 and the Employment Equality Act 1998, as she alleges discrimination on the grounds of gender and family status.
Adjudicator Roger McGrath adjourned the case on Thursday. A cross-examination of the complainant has been held over to the next hearing date, which is yet to be scheduled.
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