A company that provides bar staff to work at concerts and sporting events has said it has been “inundated” with emails from workers complaining about late payments, following delays paying staff in recent weeks.
Drinks2u, who supply bar staff for large events, has been attempting to process a large number of payments for bar work at concerts and sporting events in April.
Des Slater, director of the company, confirmed there had been delays paying some of its more than 1,000 workers, the vast majority of whom were foreign national English language students.
Events bar staff worked at included Ed Sheeran concerts in Croke Park and Páirc Ui Chaoimh, as well as horse racing meetings at Punchestown and Fairyhouse.
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“We have been delayed in some wages for our April events despite our absolute best efforts to get everyone paid on time,” Mr Slater said.
Monthly wages due on May 16th did not arrive for large numbers of staff, but the company had paid “most of the wages” earlier this week, with further payments to be made in the coming days and the backlog cleared next week, he said.
“April was an unprecedented month for us. Our workforce increased by up to 1,000 people due to concert season,” he said. The company had three full time employees and faced “challenges” setting up hundreds of new bar workers on payroll systems, following a lengthy hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The company had been “inundated with emails” from bar staff complaining that they had not been paid for work in April, he said. “The complaints are coming from staff who do not know us as a company and understandably they are nervous that they will not get paid,” Mr Slater said.
“The work involved in this is huge and has not been helped with payroll software errors, our own administration staffing issues, employee registration errors and just the sheer volume of work involved in getting people registered on payroll correctly,” he said.
Speaking to The Irish Times, Mr Slater said in some cases the “fault” lay with workers, who were unfamiliar with the process of getting set up on Irish payroll and tax systems.
The director said it appeared some staff had “wound each other up” over the delayed payments, due to fears they would not be paid.
Mr Slater said the company had warned new staff there might be some payment issues initially, adding some workers had expected to be paid “cash in hand”.
The company had no way to contact all staff waiting to be paid to reassure them they would receive their wages, other than to email affected workers individually, Mr Slater said. Office staff had prioritised processing the outstanding payments rather than responding to complaints, he said.
“We’ve been operating since 2010, we have always paid above minimum wage and like to think our staff enjoy themselves when they work with us and would consider us good employers,” he said.
