A STATE WORKPLACE watchdog has recommended that a hotel pay €7,000 compensation to a waiter over unpaid tips and for his unfair dismissal.

In the case, Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) Adjudicator, Catherine Byrne stated the worker said that he was suspended for making a complaint over unpaid tips and his wages were stopped.

Ms Byrne stated: “While he could have raised a grievance before he resigned, it seems to me that, based on how he was treated for making a complaint about the distribution of tips, his efforts to raise a grievance would have met with little success.”

Ms Byrne stated: “I accept that the worker had to leave his job, and I note the failure of the employer to respond to this claim.”

In her anonymised determination, Ms Byrne stated that the worker said that he received more in tips than he earned in wages and the employer did not contradict the worker’s version of events.

Ms Byrne stated that the worker’s payslips show that, before he was suspended, he earned an average of €500 per week.

Ms Byrne stated: “At a minimum, if he served 10 tables a day and if he was paid €10 by each table, it is reasonable to assume that he earned around €500 per week in tips.

Ms Byrne stated that the payslips submitted by the employer show that the worker was employed by them for 16 weeks in 2023, from week 12 until week 28.

She said: “If he had received the tips which he claims he was given by customers, he would have received €8,000. Based on a generally accepted practice that tips are shared with kitchen staff, I estimate that the worker would have taken home around €5,000 in tips.”

The waiter commenced working in the employer’s hotel in the midlands in March 2023. He had worked for an associated business in the south of Ireland since October 3rd 2022.

The man earned €12.50 per hour and €13.50 per hour for working on Sundays.

The employer was represented by Mr Danny Ryan BL and the employer’s head of human resources also attended the hearing but Mr Ryan told Ms Byrne that he would not be responding to the worker’s claims on behalf of his client.

At the hearing of this dispute, the worker said that the restaurant in the hotel where he worked was very busy, serving up to 200 people most days.

Represented by solicitor, Susan Doyle of SMD Solicitors in the case, the waiter said that customers were generous with tips and that, if he had retained the tips given to him, he would have made more than he earned in his weekly wages.

He said that he was instructed to hand over all the tips he received in cash. The worker said that he wrote to the HR manager of the company and he complained that he wasn’t getting his tips.

He said that he was called in by the general manager and threatened that he would only be rostered for one or two hours a week. He said that the manager also threatened to dismiss him.

Following his complaint to the company’s head office, the worker said that he was given €49 in tips and a few weeks later, he received €100.

He said that this is a small fraction of the thousands of euros that he received in tips when he worked in the hotel.

At the hearing, the worker said that he looked for information about how tips should be distributed to employees and, in April 2023, he got advice from the Department of Enterprise and Employment.

He said that, in accordance with the advice, he looked for a statement from his employer about the amount of tips received in the restaurant.

He said that his request was initially refused, and then he got a statement. He said that the statement only included the value of two months’ tips. The worker did not provide this statement at the hearing.

The worker said that his suspension from work is another form of abuse and that it was intended to get him to resign. In the end, he said that he did resign. He said that he had to leave because his employer stopped paying his wages.

In her findings, Ms Byrne stated the employer produced no information to indicate that a notice is displayed in the hotel restaurant that shows how frequently tips are distributed to staff, if they are paid in cash or through wages and the proportion of the tips given to each category of employees.

As part of her recommendation, Ms Byrne has recommended that to avoid similar disputes in the future that the employer gives serious consideration to the obligations regarding tips and gratuities set out in The Payment of Wages (Amendment) (Tips and Gratuities) Act 2022.