About 50 part-time casual banqueting workers at Jurys Hotel in Ballsbridge, Dublin have taken an action against their employer claiming entitlement to a greater share of service charges.
Three separate actions against the hotel were mentioned in the High Court yesterday and are scheduled for May 23rd.
The workers in all three cases claim to be regular part-time casual members of the banqueting staff at the hotel.
They claim it was a term of their contract of employment that the hotel would collect a service charge from customers who were attended to by the banqueting waiting staff.
The workers claim the total service charge monies were to be shared out in a particular way which would be in addition to their wages.
In all three cases it is alleged the service charge was withheld from the plaintiffs and the bulk of it was paid to the permanent staff in the banqueting section.
Jurys Hotel has denied the claims and claims the arrangements for the distribution of a service charge derives from a long-standing agreement between the hotel and the Siptu trade union.
When the case was mentioned in the High Court yesterday, Eoin McCullough SC, for Jurys, said the practice in the hotel was to add a service charge to a banqueting function. The case revolved around the way that charge was distributed, he said.
The plaintiffs claimed they were entitled to a greater share of the banqueting charge.