Restaurant fails to pay man €86k
The Labour Court has ordered Amjad Hussein, trading as the Poppadom restaurant, to pay Muhammad Younis after hearing the restaurant made him work 77-hour weeks for below the minimum wage.
The Pakistani man said working at the Indian restaurant was like being “in a deep dark well”.
“I felt I had no hope for my future and no way out.
“I have been living in a hostel for two years now waiting for my case to be sorted out. I am away from my family, jobless and I am owed a lot of money for my work. I am suffering because of the bad treatment I was subjected to.”
Mr Younis, 57, a father of nine, worked for the restaurant in Newland’s Cross between 2002 and 2009, having moved from Pakistan on a work permit.
He worked legally for the first year as a tandoori chef but then his employer let his papers lapse, which affected his status. When his passport expired, his employer took it to renew it and then refused to give it to him.
Threatened with deportation but also afraid to return home because of concerns over those who had recruited him in Pakistan, he worked without a contract of employment, with no tax and no social insurance contributions being made. He shared a house with nine others in what the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI) described as very poor conditions.
He stopped working in 2009 after an ex-employee of the restaurant offered to help him and referred him to the MRCI. Earlier this year, he was awarded €86,000 by a Rights Commissioner at the Labour Relations Commission.
As of yesterday, the money had not been paid by Poppadom, a Bridgestone Guide 2010 listed restaurant, of which there are four around the country.
The MRCI said there was no sanction for failing to pay the sum and the matter has been referred to a solicitor.
Gráinne O’Toole of the MRCI said that what Mr Younis underwent while working at Poppadom constituted forced labour.
“We have dealt with many cases over the years of severe violations of workers’ rights which constitute forced labour. Yet the most we can do is assist people in getting back wages.”
The MRCI has dealt with 150 cases of forced labour in the past six years with five new cases this year, a figure Ms O’Toole described as “the tip of the iceberg”.
“The Government needs to introduce a law to criminalise forced labour, protect victims and give greater powers to the labour inspectors and the gardaí to tackle this problem,” she said.
