An entrepreneur charging customers €120 an hour for padel and pickleball lessons sent “intimidating” texts to a coach left short on his wages when he was let go due to low demand, a tribunal has found.
In the texts opened to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), businessman William McGlade, founder of House of Padel in Dublin, accused the coach of “lying about the job you’re doing”, “manipulation of your worth”, and told him: “You’re going about this the wrong way if you want to coach padel in Dublin in Ireland”.
The worker, Andrés Martínez-Cuquerella, has now secured an order for unpaid wages and notice on foot of a rights complaint.
Mr Martínez-Cuquerella joined Mr McGlade’s padel and pickleball centre in Tallaght, Dublin 24, in January this year as a “top-rated coach in the sport”, the WRC heard.
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He was in the job for eight weeks before being terminated in March “seemingly because there was not enough coaching work to make his employment viable”, the tribunal noted in a decision published on Tuesday.
His base pay was €14 an hour for a 40-hour week on site, with provision for a €30-an-hour premium for coaching – for which customers were charged €120 an hour, the WRC heard.
Mr Martínez-Cuquerella’s evidence was that he was left short on some wages owed to him when his employment ceased. This included €224 in public holiday pay; €336 for three days’ accrued annual leave; and an underpayment of €16 for an hour’s coaching.
Adjudication officer Penelope McGrath wrote in her decision that the company’s sole director, William McGlade, had failed to show up for a hearing into the worker’s pay claim in October.
As such she considered Mr Martínez-Cuquerella’s evidence “unchallenged” apart from any points she had asked him to clarify.
“By way of an observation, I found the text messages from the company director to be intimidating and threatening in tone and print. The messages are heavy-handed and out of order,” she wrote.
“I’ll make it my mission to let your next employer of your actions of [sic] lying about the job you’re doing, the manipulation of your worth,” the company director wrote in one.
“You’re going about this the wrong way if you want to coach padel in Dublin or even Ireland so I would advise you politely for you to change your stance,” read a second text from the businessman.
The adjudication officer noted that the respondent failed to engage with any communications from the WRC at any stage about the worker’s complaint.
Ms McGrath upheld the worker’s claim for wages and made a further finding that two weeks’ wages were due to Mr Martínez-Cuquerella in lieu of notice as a result of his immediate termination.
She directed 5 Star Stay Ltd, trading as House of Padel, to pay the complainant €1,876 in redress under the Payment of Wages Act, 1991.
