The Complainant brought the case before the Labour Court after the Adjudication Officer did not uphold her claim against the Respondent. The Complaints related to the number of working hours per week, the restriction on annual leave and the insufficient break times during the day.

The Complainant was a Romanian National who commenced employment with the Respondent as a mushroom picker in 2012. By 2015, she has been promoted to Harvest Manager.

The Complainant was working approximately 81 hours a week including Saturdays. From 6.20am to 9.20pm the Complainant availed of two ten-minute breaks, two twenty-minute breaks and one thirty-minute break.

The Complainant submitted that she is lawfully entitled to additional remuneration as well as additional annual leave to fairly compensate the amount of work that she does for the Respondent.

The Respondent maintained that at no material time did the Complainant work more than 48 hours in a week. This was verified by the Complainant’s pay slips and pay analysis sheets, all of which were signed by the Complainant. However, the Complainant contended that the Respondent kept false records only reflecting half of her actual hours worked to ‘keep it legal’.

The records presented by the Respondent to the Court consisted of pay slips and pay analysis sheets. They are not records of the type contemplated by the Statutory Regulations and do not offer any conclusive evidence of hours worked.

The Court provided that it is the responsibility of the Employer to keep records of working time. Where records are not kept in the prescribed form, the onus of proving that the provisions of the Act have been complied with rests on the employer.

The obligation to provide annual leave is imposed for health and safety reasons and the right to leave has been characterised as a fundamental social right in European Law. Therefore, by way of compensation, the court found that the Complainant was entitled to €20,000 for breaches of the Act. A further €1,000 was also awarded as a result of the employer’s failure to comply with statutory requirements. https://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/cases/2019/october/dwt1924.html