A part-time meat factory worker who said she was “overwhelmed by fear” when its owner came to her home and told her he wanted “a head massage and some company” has secured more than €40,000 for sexual harassment and employment rights breaches.
A Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator has called it “profoundly troubling” that the businessman exploited the financial vulnerability of the part-time worker, who was relying on his firm for a work permit, to advance an “inappropriate agenda”.
Asba Meats Ltd in Shannon, Co Clare, was ordered to pay the sums for breaches of the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, the Employment Equality Act 1998, and the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001 in a decision published on Monday by the WRC.
Neither the worker nor the businessman was named in the decision, following a hearing in private at the WRC offices in Ennis in June, but the business was.
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The tribunal heard the worker joined Asba Meats part-time on the factory floor at Asba Meats in mid-2023 when she was a student. She worked chiefly as a trimmer, but was also doing some work as a de-boner, while earning the minimum wage.
The worker’s advocate, Sylwia Nowakowska of the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland, said Asba Meats had promised to apply for an employment permit that would allow her to work full-time, but that this never materialised.
The complainant’s take-home pay averaged just €327 a week, leaving her with difficulties making her rent payments and bills, the tribunal was told. She told the tribunal she was “desperate for hours”.
From March 2024 onwards, Ms Nowakowska submitted that the company “never” transferred her client’s wages on time. “She felt as though she needed to beg for her wages,” said the advocate.
About two months later in May 2024, it was submitted, the meat plant owner approached her on the premises and asked her for her phone number, referring to the prospect of arranging additional employment for her as a cleaner with a friend of his.
She had never spoken to the owner before, she said. The owner texted her at 7.50pm that evening and asked if she could meet, she said.
When she told him she could meet near her home – a two-room property where she was sharing sleeping space with another lodger – the businessman offered to “come for tea to her house”, she said.
The worker said she agreed to this, but was “nervous”. Her landlord, knowing the complainant needed a job, welcomed the owner. “The landlord thought it would be a professional conversation,” the worker said.
The businessman proceeded to take a number of phone calls and remained for about an hour, she said. There were “a lot of silent moments”.
She said she explained to the businessman that she was “stressed about the lack of hours”.
After telling her that he “saw her as a good person”, the businessman asked the worker to give him “a head massage” and told her he would pay her for it, the worker told the WRC in evidence.
She replied that she was feeling “uncomfortable” and that it was “inappropriate”, she told the hearing. She said she was “overwhelmed with fear”.
Her belief was that the businessman was “looking for something else” and she was afraid of how he might react and what would happen with her employment permit if she refused, she said in evidence.
He left after she told him she “needed time to think about it”, she told the hearing.
The meat plant owner later sent her texts stating that he wanted “meetings to ‘get distracted’ and pay [the worker] for it”, the tribunal was told. He stated in the messages that he “needed someone who would give him a head massage and some company from time to time”.
The worker told adjudication officer Ewa Sobanska she felt “violated” and “very uncomfortable”.
Ms Sobanska noted in her decision: “The complainant became very distressed at this point in the hearing. She described traumatising events from her early childhood, and how this incident affected her and brought back the trauma.”
The worker said the businessman “used his position” as her boss, knowing that it was “up to him” whether she would get her visa. He did not have to “say it out loud” for this to be clear to her, she told the tribunal.
The meat plant was subject to a joint inspection by the Revenue Commissioners and the Garda National Immigration Bureau on June 25th that year.
She was not called back to work before being sacked by text the following month. “You are fired because we don’t have work; we don’t have hours for you,” it said.
Ms Sobanska ruled that the worker gave “credible evidence” that the businessman subjected her to sexual harassment when he came to her home and looked for a head massage.
There was nothing to contradict the worker, because Asba Meats did not attend the hearing, she noted.
She wrote that the businessman was “fully aware” of the level of financial hardship the worker was under because of pay delays and her limited working hours, as well as her dependency on Asba Meats because of her status as a permit worker.
The businessman “exploited this vulnerability to advance his own inappropriate agenda”, Ms Sobanska wrote.
“It is profoundly troubling that the circumstances created by the respondent were manipulated by [him] in such a manner,” she added.
Ms Sobanska awarded the worker a further €8,500 for treating her less favourably than part-time staff, and €6,540 for her losses over 20 weeks’ unemployment following her unfair dismissal. The total awarded in the case was €40,040.
