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A restaurant which was run with a “chronic, institutional failure” to honour shift breaks before the Covid-19 pandemic hit has been ordered to pay five former staff over €62,000 for multiple labour law breaches.
The awards were made by the Workplace Relations Commission on foot of more than 33 separate findings against Ascot Catering Ltd, the operator of Ciao Bella Roma on Parliament Street in Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
The tribunal found there had been “extremely serious” breaches of the Organisation of Working Time Act while the restaurant was still trading prior to March 2020, when it shut without paying the workers their last fortnight’s wages or any notice pay.
Chefs Daniele Vito Antonetti and Ioan Cosmin Maties, along with kitchen assistant Darius Radu Peicu, barman Antonio Fillipo Santoiemma and bookkeeper Sandra Maties, each complained of unfair dismissal and unlawful pay deductions, with the four men also alleging working time breaches.
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There was no appearance by the employer at a joint hearing of the cases on September 20th last, nor by a sixth worker who had lodged complaints.
Employment law advisor Marius Marosan, appearing for the workers, submitted that the restaurant shut down on March 18th, 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, with the staff he represented receiving no pay for the preceding fortnight, no notice of the closure, and no notice pay.
Giving evidence, Mr Maties said the restaurant reopened in August 2020 without bringing him or any of his colleagues back to work. The complainant said that when he asked the owner whether they would be re-engaged, he was “forced to leave the restaurant”.
The owner had “promised to pay” what he owed the workers but “never did so”, Mr Maties said.
Dismissed
Each of the workers said in their claims they had not been paid for their last fortnight of employment and that they were dismissed without any notice.
Adjudicating officer Pat Brady wrote: “[Mr Maties] was, according to his evidence, and to put it mildly, asked to leave without any satisfactory indication of what would become of promises that had been made to honour outstanding payments, to say nothing of their status as employees and the prospects of returning to work.”
Mr Maties told the tribunal that he “barely got any breaks” while he was in the job and would eat whenever he got the chance – sometimes “barely” finding time to go to the toilet.
“[The staff] worked in an environment in which their statutory rights to breaks, and to paid holidays and public holidays were not respected and they were all denied payment of wages for the last two weeks of their employment,” wrote Mr Brady.
“The breaches of the Organisation of Working Time Act were extremely serious and there was a chronic, institutional failure to honour the entitlement to breaks. As a measure of the gravity of the breach of the act I award the complainant €5,000 compensation,” Mr Brady wrote in his decision on Mr Antonetti’s case.
He awarded the same aggregate amount as compensation for breaches of the right to weekly rest periods and the right to daily shift breaks to Mr Maties and Mr Peicu.
Mr Santoiemma was awarded €2,500 for breaches of his right to daily shift breaks only, having made no complaint in respect of weekly breaks.
Unpaid wages
Mr Antonetti also secured €1,347 for the employer’s failure to provide a written contract, though a complaint on the same basis by his kitchen colleague, Mr Maties, was ruled “not well founded”, as the worker had stated in evidence that he got written terms.
The tribunal found all five workers had been unfairly dismissed and awarded sums ranging from €720 in the case of Ms Maties to €7,500 in the case of Mr Peicu, for a total of €15,403.
Mr Brady also made orders against Ascot Catering requiring the payment of €4,772 in unpaid wages; €9,706 in notice pay and €31,371.80 for the various breaches of the Organisation of Working Time Act.
Mr Antonetti secured €17,456. Fellow chef Mr Maties received €16,786; kitchen assistant got Mr Peicu €16,847 and Mr Santoiemma, the barman, secured €10,071.
The restaurant’s part-time bookkeeper, Sandra Maties, did not pursue working time complaints, but secured €1,440 in compensation for her losses from unfair dismissal and nonpayment of wages and notice pay.
The total orders against Ascot Catering Ltd in the case amounted to €62,600.