The Workplace Relations Commission awarded Aldona Pileckiene €15,000 after finding that Sillis Green Veg Limited underpaid her for Sunday work, allowed her to work excessive hours and penalised her after she raised health and safety concerns. In a decision dated 9 March 2023, the WRC found she averaged 48.1 hours a week over 17 weeks, above the legal 48-hour limit.
Pileckiene worked as a general operator cleaning and packing vegetables. She said she received no reasonable Sunday allowance and was pressured to keep working long hours despite asking to work 40 hours a week. The company argued that the evidence did not establish breaches. The adjudicator found the Sunday premium was five cents an hour and that a reasonable allowance would have been €3.33 an hour.
The WRC awarded €2,000 for the Sunday allowance breach, €10,000 for excessive weekly hours and €3,000 for penalisation. It found her night-work and public-holiday complaints not well founded. In plain terms, employers must provide a reasonable premium for Sunday work and take steps to prevent employees averaging more than 48 hours a week over the relevant period.