Hotel must pay €10k to female worker over 'itinerant' remark

The WRC was satisfied that the complainant, who worked as a bartender at the hotel, was subjected to harassment by the manager and the harassment constitutes discrimination.

A hotel has been ordered to pay a €10,000 discrimination award to a female employee from a Traveller background after a senior manager referred to her as ‘an itinerant’.

In finding the hotel vicariously liable for the slur, Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator, Catherine Byrne said she could conceive of no motive for referring to the 21-year-old in public as an itinerant “other than to humiliate and embarrass her”.