A claim by Siptu that chefs in a bar at the Gresham Hotel, Dublin, are not entitled to a share of service charges has been rejected by the Labour Court.
The union had sought to have three chefs at Toddy's Bar excluded from a pool of employees who benefit from the distribution of service charges at the hotel.
The court was told that in all service areas of the hotel, with the exception of Toddy's Bar, a 2.5 per cent service charge is added to customers' bills. This is then shared out among employees, who are divided into different pools.
Siptu told the court that the agreement in relation to Toddy's was that staff would receive higher rates of pay to compensate for the lack of a service charge. Under this arrangement, when the bar opened in 1990 its chefs received a higher basic rate and commission on food sales. Over time, however, the hotel had replaced these chefs with others who had been placed in the service charge pool.
Management of the hotel said that removing the chefs from the service charge pool would impose "prohibitive costs" on the hotel. The Gresham had already removed two managers from the pool to avoid industrial action, at a cost of €14,300 per annum.
The court found that the chefs had established an entitlement to the payments by custom and practice over a prolonged period.
