The High Court allowed Trinity Leisure Holdings Limited, trading as Trinity City Hotel, to appeal a Labour Court decision that had awarded two employees a premium for Sunday work. It dismissed their claims under section 14(1) of the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997.
Mr Justice Binchy gave judgment on 7 October 2019 in an appeal limited to a point of law. The employees, Sofia Kolesnik and Natalia Alfimova, had claimed that they were not paid a Sunday premium. Their contracts stated that their hourly rate included a Sunday premium, based on working two Sundays out of every three. At the time they made their claims, each was paid €9.53 an hour.
The Labour Court had affirmed an adjudication officer’s direction that the hotel pay a premium of 30% of the basic rate for Sunday hours worked between 25 September 2013 and 24 March 2014. It reasoned that the hotel had not provided evidence identifying what part, if any, of the employees’ hourly rate related to Sunday work.
The High Court held that the Labour Court made an error of law by disregarding the express wording in the contracts and requiring the hotel to prove the Sunday premium in a particular way. The judge said the contracts were the only evidence before the Labour Court on whether Sunday work had been accounted for in the pay. Their terms clearly stated that the hourly rate included the premium.
The judge said a contractual statement would not always be conclusive. An employee seeking to show that Sunday work was not reflected in their pay would need to provide credible evidence challenging the contract’s statement. No such evidence was recorded in this case. The court also rejected the employees’ argument that the employer had to break out the Sunday element of the hourly rate, finding that the stated hourly rate met the relevant information requirement under the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994.
The judgment concerns the Sunday premium claims only. The source records that the employees had other employment-law complaints, including complaints under the 1994 Act, which the Labour Court had determined in their favour; those other matters were not the claims dismissed in this appeal.