WRC awards €16,000 to employee not paid extra for working Sundays

A worker has been awarded more than €16,000 after his employer admitted failing to pay him extra for working Sundays in an “oversight” that went on for more than 13 years.

The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) awarded Krzysztof Cender a sum equivalent to six months’ pay after upholding his complaint against Onsite Facilities Management Ltd under the Organisation of Working Time Act.

Mr Cender, who was represented in the employment law proceedings by Mannix & Co LLP, said he works every Sunday as a routine since starting at the company in March 2007, but that he had not been paid anything extra for it.

He said he first raised the issue of a Sunday premium with company director Catherine Leen and a HR officer after a meeting in 2014 and had been told he was “not entitled to it”.

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There was no reference to a Sunday premium in a letter issued after the meeting which was submitted in evidence.

The complainant began to receive the Sunday premium from April 2022 when he raised the matter again.

Asked by adjudicating officer Úna Glazier-Farmer why he did not follow up before 2022, he said that he had accepted that he had no entitlement to it.

Giving evidence, the company director Ms Leen said the failure to pay a Sunday premium had been “due to an oversight” which she said had been rectified in April 2022 and that Mr Cender was now on double time.

She said she remembered the 2014 meeting with Mr Cender, adding that she could not remember Sunday premium pay being raised and that she believed all his grievances had been addressed in writing in the letter.

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The company’s position was that it only became aware of the issue when Mr Cender lodged his WRC complaint in the spring of 2022.

Mr Cender’s solicitor argued his client “ought to be compensated for the entire duration of his employment when he worked Sunday as a normal working day”.

The adjudicator, Ms Glazier-Farmer, noted that the working time legislation states that an employee required to work on a Sunday “shall be compensated” for the work and that the precedent in the area required an employment contract to note “clearly and unambiguously that compensation was paid”.

“It was accepted by the respondent this was not included in [Mr Cender’s] original contract nor has an updated contract with the appropriate clause been furnished,” the adjudicator wrote.

She said the onus was “at all times” on the employer to ensure an employee was compensated in line with the Act and ruled the complaint to be “well founded”.

Ms Glazier-Farmer said €16,692 in compensation, six months’ pay for the complainant, was “just and equitable” for the 13½ years without the Sunday premium.

She made an order for the sum against Onsite Facilities Management Ltd and further directed the firm to provide an updated contract with reference to the premium by mid-February.