The owners of a top Dublin Mexican restaurant have been ordered to pay a waitress €4,600 for multiple employment law breaches, including the failure to provide proper shift breaks.
Paola Alba Dalivar told the Workplace Relations Commission last year she “never received a rest break” at the El Grito Mexican Tacqueria unless she worked over eight hours – and some days got no break at all.
Accepting the complainant’s uncontested evidence, an adjudicating officer wrote that the law on shift breaks provided for worker safety.
The officer also said it was “not acceptable for employers to ignore the health and safety of their employees” by failing to comply.
Ms Alba-Dalivar, who worked at the restaurant as waiting staff from August 2018 to July 2021 earning €12 an hour for a 35-hour week, said that although she had signed a copy of an employment contract, she was never given a copy.
In the six months prior to lodging her complaint, the limit of the WRC’s jurisdiction in the matter, the complainant said she had worked 18 Sundays without receiving any premium pay.
Nor did she get “any extra pay” for working four bank holidays or the days off or pay in lieu required, she said.
She said that although she got an unexplained payment of €1,364.76 when she left the employment, she said she “had not received any holidays” between September 2020 and June 2021.
She further alleged that she had been left without her full entitlement to paid leave in the 2021 annual leave year, and was also not given an unbroken fortnight off work.
