Under the resolution of a tribunal recommendation, a waiter who claimed he faced possible dismissal following his complaint to his employer about the withholding of thousands of euros in tips, is set to receive €7,000. On Monday, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) suggested this compensation for wrongful termination and the retention of tips. This suggestion came in an anonymised decision regarding a workplace conflict sparked by the waiter about his service at a hotel restaurant in the midlands, from March to July 2023.
With a basic hourly wage of €12.50 for a 35 to 40-hour week, the waiter revealed that his patrons were quite liberal with their tips. The denied tips, he claimed, could have boosted his weekly income considerably. However, he was mandated to surrender all cash tips without receiving any. When he protested to the human resources manager of his employer, he was threatened with being allocated only minimal working hours by the hotel’s general manager.
Two meagre sums of €100 and €49 were later given to him, which he stated was a small fraction of the whole sum in tips he earned at the hotel. In his words, the general manager’s demeanor was highly abusive, making his work environment unbearable.
Susan Doyle represented him as his lawyer and submitted that her client was put on suspension following a manager’s letter in which she mentioned feeling unsafe working with him. However, the waiter labelled the allegations as baseless and asserted they were devoid of any truth. He also reported the situation to the local police. Describing his suspension as another means to pressurise him to resign, he eventually had to quit when the hotel terminated his remuneration.
Danny Ryan BL, who served as the employer’s representative, declined to address the waiter’s grievances at the tribunal, according to adjudicator Catherine Byrne. Byrne, in her decision, argued that the hotel management did not dispute the waiter’s account and acknowledged his reason to quit, declaring his responses were appropriate. She pointed out that the employer showed no evidence of following the required protocol concerning tip distribution at the eatery.
In her interpretation of the worker’s declarations at the hearing, Ms Byrne conveyed that it was plausible that the employee had garnered approximately €500 weekly in gratuities during his 16-week tenure at the establishment, equating to an overall total of €8,000. This conclusion was derived from the presumption that the waiter served a daily count of ten tables, each rendering a tip of €10, as outlined by Ms Byrne.
After distributing a portion of the gratuities with the kitchen personnel, as is the regular protocol, the employee likely ended up with close to €5,000 in tips, she projected.
Ms Byrne recommended a €7,000 payment to the employee, as a remedy for the employer’s negligence in distributing the earned tips and for the unwarranted termination of the worker.
She also implored the hotel management to seriously study their responsibilities regarding tips and service charges as per the amendments made to the Payment of Wages Act in 2022. The law mandates employers to prominently display notices in two accessible areas, preferably where the service is paid for, detailing the distribution of tips and gratuities among staff members.