A piggery in Co Cavan has been ordered to pay a former employee almost €14,000 by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

Drumloman Pork Ltd, represented by director Eamon Briody, was instructed to pay Ryszard Kulbaka €11,520.65 for losses incurred as a result of unpaid annual leave.

This accumulated across the six years he worked for the company from December 2017 to November 2023.

WRC adjudication officer Emile Daly also ordered Drumloman Pork to pay €2,245 for failing to provide a contract of employment to Kulbaka, as well as €90.40 for unpaid public holidays and €36.61 for unauthorised deductions of wages.

In total this amounts to €13,892.66 awarded to Kulbaka, outlined in a WRC decision published this week.

Annual leave

Much of the WRC hearing centred on Kulbaka’s unpaid annual leave.

In the six years he worked for Drumloman Pork, Kulbaka received between one and five days annual leave per year.

In 2017 he was entitled to 18.5 hours of annual leave. He received zero days that year amounting to a shortfall of €171.68. For each of the years from 2018 to 2023 he was entitled to four weeks of annual leave.

In 2018 he received four annual leave days, three in 2019, two in 2020, five in 2021, three in 2022 and one in 2023. This amounted to shortfalls of between €1,658.09 and €2,007.42 annually.

Kulbaka, who spoke through a Polish interpreter at the hearing last month, was paid minimum wage for duties carried out on the farm such as feeding pigs and piglets and disinfecting pens.

‘Use it or lose it’

Briody, a director of Drumloman Pork, agreed there was a shortfall of annual leave days taken for each year of Kulbaka’s employment.

He did not dispute the number of paid leave days Kulbaka said he was given.

However, Briody said he advised Kulbaka regularly that if he did not take annual leave, he would lose it. He claimed the former employee kept working despite these warnings. Kulbaka denied any such warning was given to him.

Responding to a question from the WRC adjudication officer on why Kulbaka would work for four weeks each year when he did not have to and still be paid, Briody said that he did not know why.

Briody also said he wanted the complaints dealt with as it was causing him “great stress to deal with this." The employer added that the leave claims were historic and “largely out of time."

Holiday pay was withheld from Kulbaka in 2023 because he left without notice, Briody said.

The director of the company acknowledged that he owed his former employee €90.40 for unpaid public holidays and €36.61 for unauthorised deductions in wages.

Decision

WRC adjudication officer Daly found that Drumloman Pork did not exercise due diligence to ensure Kulbaka took annual leave nor did it prove that it had sufficiently warned him if he did not use the annual leave allowance he would lose it.

Daly said Briody “seemed not fully aware as how fundamental annual leave is as a social right."

“He did not appear to be concerned that he had an employee who kept working and did not avail of his right to paid time off for the entire six years that he worked for him,” she added.

Furthermore, the adjudication officer said it was noteworthy that Briody was critical of Kulbaka not giving the company four weeks’ notice – which she pointed out is not required by law – when he did not seem concerned that an employee availed of so little annual leave each year.

Contract

The issue of whether or not Kulbaka was provided a contract of employment was also examined at the hearing.

Briody said he provided Kulbaka a contract within a few weeks of him commencing employment in 2017. A copy was shown to the adjudication officer via Briody’s computer screen during the remote hearing.

The adjudication officer asked why this was not provided to the WRC in advance. Briody said he did not think he had to.

Representation for Kulbaka denied this contract was ever provided and asked why his name was spelt correctly on the contract when it had been misspelt on payslips and other documents for the six years Kulbaka worked for Dromloman Pork.

Briody said inaccuracies on payslips were mistakes by his administration team not by him.

The adjudication officer said Briody had been advised all documentation would have to be provided in advance.

Daly awarded Kulbaka a total of €13,892.66 for losses incurred as a result of unpaid annual leave, not being provided a contract of employment, unpaid public holidays and deductions of wages.