A Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator has blasted a security firm for its “blatant flouting” of national pay regulations for the sector as he awarded more than €30,000 to a worker subjected to non-payment of wages.
Security officer Kipkorir Francis Kiptoo is the 16th worker to win an employment rights claim against BGS Security Ltd, trading as BGSS, in the past 18 months – with the total awards against the company in that time now standing at over €140,000.
The company, whose clients included Centra, Spar and Supervalu stores in Dublin, also had its licence to operate static security guards revoked by the Private Security Authority (PSA) in June this year.
The tribunal noted that Mr Kiptoo had given sworn testimony on his complaints under the Payment of Wages Act 1991, the Industrial Relations Act 1946, and the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 at a hearing in May this year.
READ MORE
Mr Kiptu’s representative, David Cotter of the Independent Workers’ Union (IWU), submitted payslips, work rosters and records of wages in support of a payment liability of €4,213.96 on the part of BGSS to his client.
Mr Cotter submitted that BGSS “effectively ignored the requirements of the employment regulations order (ERO)” for the security sector and had suffered an “egregious breach of statutory rights”.
The trade union rep gave evidence that he had made “numerous efforts… to no avail, to establish contact in the hope of local agreed settlement” with the management of BGSS, adjudicator Michael McEntee wrote.
In his decision on the case, Mr McEntee wrote that the claim was “one of numerous cases being taken by former employees against this respondent”.
He was satisfied that the company was on notice of the “time, date and place” of the hearing and had failed to present any “bona fide explanations” for failing to attend.
He found that Mr Kiptoo’s trade union rep had set out a “comprehensive case supported by detailed evidence” that his client was owed €4,213.96 in wages to which there had been no rebuttal or counterargument.
“The wages due will have to be paid,” the adjudicator wrote.
Mr McEntee also ordered BGS Security to pay Mr Kiptoo €26,500, one year’s pay, in compensation for noncompliance with the employment regulation order in breach of the Industrial Relations Act 1946.
He wrote that the national system of employment regulation orders was meant to be “a safeguard for workers, and as importantly, to law-abiding employers”.
“Blatant flouting of the order is egregious to fair commercial trading, good industrial practice and national industrial relations,” he added.
Mr McEntee also awarded €2,000 to Mr Kiptoo for a breach of the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 in BGSS’s failure to provide a “satisfactory contract of employment”.
The total awarded to Mr Kiptoo in the case was €32,713.96 – with today’s decision bringing the total due to former BGSS staff on foot of findings of employment rights breaches since May 2024 to €140,560.71.
It’s understood that at least two more former employees of the company are to have cases heard by the WRC in the coming weeks.
