Work

Indian restaurant worker secures €143,000 award over breaches and harassment

Migrant worker said she feared being raped by colleagues and suffered near daily sexual harassment at work

An Indian restaurant worker has been awarded €143,000 over breaches of workplace rules. Photograph: iStock

Stephen Bourke
Wed Apr 3 2024 - 14:04

A migrant worker who said she feared being raped by colleagues at a north Dublin restaurant amid near-daily alleged sexual harassment has secured over €143,000 for gender discrimination and multiple labour law breaches at the Workplace Relations Commission.

Sharanjeet Kaur, a chef and mother of two from India, said she left a job in Malaysia and came to Ireland to work for Bombay Bhappa Ltd, trading as Bombay House in Skerries, Co Dublin in 2020 on the promise of a “significant” salary and a “life-changing experience for her and her children”.

Instead, she found herself under the “constant threat of blackmail and deportation”, being paid as little as €200 for a 50-hour working week as the company’s director brought her to an ATM and forced her to take out large sums of cash and hand it back to him after she received her pay, she said.

The €143,268 awarded to Ms Kaur on foot of her statutory complaints is the second-largest award made by the tribunal to a single complainant so far this year. The Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland, which represented Ms Kaur in the proceedings, said it was the largest award made to one of its clients in a decade.

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Sylwia Nowakowska, the centre representative who appeared for Ms Kaur, submitted that Ms Kaur was told by company director Bhappa Singh that an employment permit would cost €17,000 and that her father in India had taken out a loan and paid cash to Mr Singh to pay for it.

Ms Kaur lived with seven other employees, sharing a bedroom with the only other woman in the house. She told the tribunal that from her first week in the job, one of her colleagues, identified as Mr R1 in the decision, falsely accused her of having “improper relations” with another male colleague, Mr F.

The complainant said Mr R1 attempted to “blackmail” her about her friendship with Mr F, threatening to send photos to her family in India – and later asked her to move in with him while his wife was away.

Ms Kaur said she “knew what this meant”.

Another worker, an older man identified only as Mr R2, repeatedly told Ms Kaur he wanted to kiss and have sex with her while also touching her on the cheek, arms and upper body, the tribunal was told.

Her case was that she feared going into the cold room at the restaurant “in case she was sexually assaulted or raped”, it was submitted.

The tribunal heard that Ms Kaur’s roommate, Ms R3, was “very friendly” with Mr R1 and the older colleague, Mr R2, telling them personal details about Ms Kaur. This included descriptions of her genitalia, and underwear, along with references to her menstrual cycle and what sanitary products she used, Ms Kaur said.

She had “no one to go to for help” as it seemed to her that all of the staff and management, bar her friend Mr F, were “complicit”, it was submitted.

Ms Kaur said she was initially paid €200 a week into her bank account between September 2021 and April 2022. From May 2022 onward, she said, Mr Singh began paying her about €500 a week but that after she got her wages, he would bring her to an ATM, have her withdraw €290 in cash and take it from her.

The net result was that she ended up earning just €4.46 an hour for 50 hours’ work a week, she said.

She told the tribunal she believed the reason she was sacked in November 2022 was because she refused to take out the cash for him.

The company had stated in a dismissal letter that she had been arguing with other staff, it was submitted. Ms Kaur said she “only asked them not to touch [her]” and rejected their sexual advances.

Ms Kaur said one of her weekly duties was to chop 160 kilograms of onions in the space of a single day. On one occasion, she said she had to carry a 20kg container of raw chicken a quarter of a kilometre to another restaurant owned by her employer because an oven was broken.

Her “lunch break” lasted five minutes a day and was taken sitting on a bucket in the kitchen, she added.

The tribunal heard Ms Kaur remained at the company’s house for 15 days after her dismissal until she was brought away by gardaí. A Garda detective who gave evidence to the tribunal said Ms Kaur had been left “very traumatised and damaged” after her employment with the firm.

Company director, Mr Singh, and his representative abandoned a hearing of the complaints at the WRC on January 30th this year, protesting the presence of two gardaí from National Protective Services Bureau, who said they were there to protect Ms Kaur on foot of a complaint of witness intimidation following an earlier hearing.

Don Garry, appearing for the company, said the officers were there to “intimidate and embarrass” his client and were exerting an “undue influence”. He and Mr Singh then left the hearing, the tribunal noted.

Adjudicator Elizabeth Spelman wrote that the ordeal described by the worker while “living under the constant threat of blackmail and deportation” was cause enough for her to extend her jurisdiction to its maximum and admit the complaints going back a full year.

Ms Spelman said Ms Kaur’s uncontested evidence was “a distressing catalogue of discrimination, harassment and sexual harassment which she suffered on [an] almost daily basis for the entirety of her employment”.

Upholding Ms Kaur’s complaint of discrimination on gender grounds, she ruled that the company was in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998 and awarded her the maximum compensation of two year’s pay – €60,000. She awarded a further year’s pay, €30,000, under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977.

Finding the employer had denied the worker Sunday premium pay, shift breaks, annual leave and paid holiday entitlements worth €2,905, Ms Spelman made an order for the payment of that sum as well as compensation totalling €35,000 for rights breaches.

Ms Spelman also awarded Ms Kaur €7,450 for unlawful pay deductions in breach of the Payment of Wages Act 1991, €575 for the failure to provide a contract in writing; and €7,248 for a shortfall in wages under the National Minimum Wage Act.

The total orders against Bombay Bhappa Ltd amounted to €143,268.

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