The owner of a mushroom farm has been ordered to pay a worker €15,000 for failing to pay her the minimum wage for an 80-hour week, while concealing falsified details of her working hours when she signed off on them.
The Workplace Relations Commission adjudicator investigating her complaint has branded it "a most heinous breach of her employment rights".
Ana Lacramioara Manciu complained under the National Minimum Wage Act against Co Tipperary mushroom grower Stablefield Limited, alleging she earned just €2,093 a month for working an 85-hour week.
The company is owned by Thomas and Eleanor Sweeney of Killeatin, Clogheen, Co Tipperary.
The commission was told Ms Manciu earned between €4.06 and €6.17 an hour while working for the company between 2012 and 2016.
In evidence, she said she came to Ireland in 2012 from Romania for work and found employment as a picker at the farm.
She said she was surprised to be kept working as late as 10pm – but other staff told her it didn’t matter how long she worked but rather the focus was on the weight of mushrooms picked – with staff paid 30-33 cent for every kilo.
She was repeatedly promoted and eventually rose to the position of harvest supervisor, she said, with her pay rising from €1,600 gross to €2,093.
That meant starting as early as 6am to meet the pickers on site, with the work day not ending until as late as 9.30pm, she said, often with just one day off a week or none at all.
Payslip
She said part of her job was to call employees to an office, where they were asked to sign a payslip and a second page which initially appeared to be blank – but which she later found out contained a detail of hours worked per week.
Her evidence was that “the respondent would hold their hand on the page on the desk, so the employee was unable to see or review hours of work”.
She said she looked at her husband’s documentation, which indicated that where he had picked 1,000kg of mushrooms this would be divided by 30 cent – indicating a false hourly wage of €9.
“Working hours were regularly, if not daily, altered by [Thomas] Sweeney,” Ms Manciu said, adding that she could see him making changes in real time when he logged into her computer using remote access software.
Ms Manciu submitted screenshots of the clock-in system for several dates, including 5th February, 2015, when she clocked in at 6.05am and clocked out at 9.56pm – a working day of 15 hours and 12 minutes, with 70 minutes deducted for breaks.
She said she was asked to sign a pay analysis sheet for that month, as usual, without having sight of what it said.
Later, she found out it indicated she worked just 6.58 hours on 5th February, 2015, she told the commission.
She gave three similar examples of the clock-in system recording hours well in excess of what the other sheet indicated in 2015 and 2016.
The company put forward no evidence in defence, and only made legal submissions objecting to the case being heard at all.
Previous decision
In October 2019, Ms Manciu was awarded €21,000 after the Labour Court overturned a previous decision by the Workplace Relations Commission on claims for holiday pay and annual leave made under the Organisation of Working Time Act.
Stablefield argued at the outset that the claim under the National Minimum Wage Act should be dismissed as it had already been dealt with by way of an inspection, which found against the company and led to a “compliance notice, fixed penalty notice and a criminal hearing”.
Rachel O’Flynn BL, for the company, said the inspector made an investigation into all aspects of the case, including the underpayment of wages in a “far reaching report”.
“Whether correct or not,” she said, the commission had made a decision in the case in 2017. She argued that the Ms Manciu had appealed five of her original complaints, but not this one.
Sharon Dillon-Lyons BL, appearing for Ms Manciu, argued there was no evidence the investigation or prosecution concerned underpayment.
She said her client had originally sought adjudication of her pay claim and that the only request for inspection related to her not having received a statement of her hourly rate of pay – matters dealt with in different sections of the national Minimum Wage Act.
Ms Dillon-Lyons said although the previous adjudicator in the case had made reference to a claim under Section 24 of the National Minimum Wage Act, that complaint was not properly before the commission because no statement of Ms Manciu’s hourly rate of pay was sought.
She argued that her client had requested a statement of her hourly pay rate in her original complaint in 2016 but that this was not sent back within the four weeks required.
Jurisdiction
Adjudication officer Úna Glazier-Farmer accepted she had jurisdiction to hear the case.
She said Ms Manciu had been “intentionally kept in the dark as to how much per hour she earned or even that she was entitled to a minimum wage for [A]demanding 80-hours-per-week job”.
The complainant gave her evidence with “exceptional detail and clarity” and she said it was accepted in its entirety.
“The falsification of working hours with the clear intention of deceiving the complainant and underpaying her significantly less than the national minimum wage is the most heinous breach of her employment rights,” Ms Glazier-Farmer said. “The respondent sought to take advantage of the complainant , who by her own admission, was not familiar with her employment rights upon arrival in this country.”
