Ex-RTÉ newsreader finds out she was full employee — two decades after leaving 

Angie Mezzetti worked at RTÉ between 1984 and 2001 as a continuity announcer and newsreader.

A former RTÉ newsreader has been told she was effectively a full employee of the broadcaster when she worked there, despite never receiving full employment benefits.

Angie Mezzetti worked at RTÉ between 1984 and 2001, first as a television continuity announcer and later as a newsreader.

In 2000 she took a case to the then Labour Relations Commission, claiming she had effectively been unfairly dismissed when RTÉ stopped giving her work in 2000. That case was eventually settled privately.

However, having recently requested an insurability of employment review from the Department of Social Protection’s employment status unit, Ms Mezzetti was told that an investigation was unnecessary as she had been correctly classified as a PAYE worker for the duration of her time with RTÉ.

It transpired that Ms Mezzetti, who now works as a podcast producer and communications trainer, had been paid as a Class A PRSI worker — that is, as a direct employee — for her entire career with the State broadcaster.

Responding to her request, a department investigator told her that the documents they had received from RTÉ regarding Ms Mezzetti’s employment “are consistent with documents provided in relation to employees, rather than self-employed contractors”.

Despite this, when a claim was taken on behalf of Ms Mezzetti by the National Union of Journalists to the then Rights Commission in September 2000, in which she said she had been unilaterally removed from RTÉ’s newscaster roster, RTÉ claimed that it could not have unfairly dismissed Ms Mezzetti as she had only ever been a casual employee.

As part of that claim Ms Mezzetti said that by removing her from the working rosters RTÉ had “broken a de facto contract of employment without agreement or notice”.

As a casual employee, Ms Mezzetti was denied access to RTÉ’s pension schemes, despite having worked there for nearly 18 years. She was also denied natural increments to her salary, and was always paid a flat rate even when working as a national newscaster.

Queried as to how RTÉ had been justified in treating Ms Mezzetti as a freelance worker when she was being paid as a PAYE employee, a spokesperson for the broadcaster said that it “cannot comment on individual cases”.

Ms Mezzetti said of her case that she had “always felt aggrieved that I wasn’t recognised as an employee and wasn’t allowed access to the pension scheme”.

RTÉ is currently the subject of a multi-year review by the Department of Social Protection as to whether or not 695 of its employees had been wrongfully classified as self-employed – or bogus self-employed – between 2019 and 2021 despite doing the same work as people directly employed by the broadcaster.

Bogus self-employment is the practice where a worker who is acting in the capacity of an employee of a company or agency is classified as self-employed for PRSI purposes and as such does not receive the same statutory social insurance contributions and holiday benefits that PAYE workers receive.

This story was originally published on January 22, 2024.