A long-serving chef at Shanahan’s on the Green in Dublin has won nearly €6,000 after being left short for wages, notice pay and holiday entitlements when the high-profile restaurant shut its doors last year.
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) gave an award worth just short of eight weeks’ pay to sous chef Piotr Fraszczyk on foot of his complaints under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 and the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act 1973 against JMS International Holdings Ltd, trading as Shanahan’s on the Green.
Mr Fraszczyk, who began working at the restaurant in November 2010, confirmed to the tribunal at a hearing in February this year that he was paid statutory redundancy after an en masse application was made on behalf of the employees following the restaurant’s closure in October 2024.
Giving evidence with the aid of an interpreter, in the absence of any representative of the company, Mr Fraszczyk said that he and other staff received a letter on 13 October last year stating that the restaurant had “ceased trading temporarily”.
Adjudicator Brian Dalton said it seemed that the complainant had been placed on lay-off and had exercised his right to apply for redundancy after a number of weeks without work.
Mr Fraszczyk disagreed. “It’s actually the accountant who initiated the redundancy process, because she started to get it done en masse,” he said, referring to a letter of 26th October.
“That’s termination – that’s different, so then it moved to a place where it said it was closing,” Mr Dalton said. “So she actually worked on behalf of all of you, she did it voluntarily, this accountant?” he asked the claimant.
“It was strange, everyone was so surprised,” Mr Fraszczyk said.
“She did it herself; she did it on behalf of the group of employees and she made representations to Social Welfare on behalf of all of you,” Mr Dalton said, reading the correspondence.
In his decision, Mr Dalton wrote that one week’s gross wages, €750, were due to Mr Frazczyk, along with 4.67 days’ accrued annual leave.
The chef’s 14 years’ service also entitled him to six weeks’ notice of termination, which was not given by the employer, the adjudicator wrote. He awarded six weeks’ pay in compensation, €4,500 – bringing the total due to Mr Fraszczyk to €5,950.50.
The sum is on top of a statutory redundancy payment of €17,160, which Mr Fraszczyk confirmed he received last November under the Statutory Redundancy Payment Scheme.
Meanwhile, in a separate decision published on Friday, the WRC has ordered another restaurant operator to pay a culinary arts student €650 following a dispute over whether he was working in its kitchen for money or not after he continued on there after completing a college internship.
At One North Main Ltd, trading as The Neighbourhood, has been directed to pay the student, Christian Hyland, €650 under the Payment of Wages Act 1991.
The tribunal heard Mr Hyland, a culinary arts student at the Technological University of Dublin (TUD), interned at the restaurant between April and May 2024 before being asked to work at the restaurant’s stall at the Taste of Dublin event later that summer.
He “gladly got stuck into a week of work” and made €700, an adjudicator noted.
Mr Hyland said in evidence he was then asked to work weekends at the restaurant for the rest of his summer holidays. He said he was “glad of the work” and “fully expected to get paid”. His case was that he had worked 15 hours a week for eight weeks at a rate of €11.43 an hour, and was owed €1,371.
The restaurant owner, Tom McGrath, along with a manager and a chef, “vehemently denied” in their evidence that Mr Hyland was an employee with an expectation to be paid, the adjudicator noted.
The business’s position was that Mr McGrath and Mr Hyland had agreed that the student chef was “welcome to come back on weekends to observe how things worked” and that there was a hope that a position would open up for him in the kitchen “somewhere down the road”.
However, adjudicator Penelope McGrath noted that the chef had mentioned that Mr Hyland “might do odd jobs and might occasionally peel potatoes or fetch something”.
Mr Hyland said he was “doing more than shadowing”. He said he was “chopping and prepping, making sauces” and was staying back at the end of service to clean. He was “deeply aggrieved” that the restaurant did not intend paying him, the adjudicator noted.
Ms McGrath wrote that Mr Hyland was a young student with “very little control or expectation over what might seem reasonable in terms of training and working” – whereas the employer was a “reputable and busy restaurant with a large staff”.
“I think there has to have been an onus on the respondent staff or owner to make that clear from the start. Otherwise, the respondent runs the risk of seeming to be exploitative,” she wrote.
She wrote that the employer had to “take the blame for any ambiguity” as it was in the dominant position and “held all the cards from the point of view of the aspiring chef”.
Ruling the complaint “well founded”, Ms McGrath awarded Mr Hyland €650. This was on the basis that the complainant had no record of his working hours, and the restaurant’s management disagreed with the number of hours and weeks he said he was on the premises.
