Former ice-cream parlour worker who alleged she worked 90-hour weeks said her baby didn’t recognise her

A former ice cream parlour worker who says she had to put in 90 hours a week at times has told a tribunal that her hours were so long her baby son did not recognise her by the time her employment ended.

“When I finished, I don’t know nothing, just the work, 7.30am to 10.30pm,” the worker told the Workplace Relations Commission today.

“I go home, wash, make food; the kids [are] asleep. When I go to work, the kids [are] asleep. When I finished work, my baby had one year, and he don’t know me; he don’t know to say ‘mama’, because I don’t have time for them,” she added.

A barrister acting for the worker, Romanian national and mother of two Anita Popa, said his client’s boss once called her “the perfect machine who takes care of anything” – and alleged that “reams of reams of fabricated documents” have been produced by her former employer in response to her employment rights complaints.

Ms Popa has brought statutory complaints against Melt Gelato Ltd, the operator of an ice-cream parlour and café next door to each other on the Trim Road, Navan, Co Meath, claiming she was underpaid, obliged to work excessive hours, denied breaks, denied her maternity leave entitlements, discriminated against and unfairly dismissed following an alleged assault by a colleague.

Lars Asmussen BL, appearing for the complainant, instructed by Navan-based solicitor Neil Cosgrave, said the company’s response to the his client’s complaints of “unreasonable and unlawful” hours had been to produce “reams and reams of fabricated documents, including pursuant to the Organisation of Working Time Act, which is a criminal offence”.

Giving evidence, Ms Popa said she never saw or signed roster documents dated late 2022 and early 2023 which had been produced by the proprietors of Melt Gelato Ltd in response to her multiple working time complaints. When examples of the rosters were put before her she said repeatedly that they were “fake” and that the initials “A.P.” which appeared on them were not her signature.

Denying the complaints on behalf of the company, Billy Wall of Peninsula Business Services said: “My client offered gainful employment… she was paid for the hours that she did work. In terms of 60 to 90 hours per week, that’s a total fabrication of the truth.”

“She raised not one complaint. There was nothing to complain on. We refute the allegations… our evidence will show that it’s incorrect what is being said,” Mr Wall added.

Giving evidence today with the assistance of a Romanian-language interpreter, Ms Popa said she already had four years’ experience from an ice cream parlour in Germany when she moved to Ireland and approached the respondent seeking work in April 2021. She said she received €8 for an hour’s work cleaning the premises in the morning to begin with and that her hours expanded from there.

With the summer “very busy”, she was working 12 hours a day from 9am to 9pm in the parlour. From April 2022, Ms Popa said, the firm opened a second shop, and her hours expanded to 15 hours a day, from 7.30am to 10.30am.

“Sometimes I take more,” she said.

The respondent position was that Ms Popa never worked there in 2021. Ms Popa said she did not agree with this, identifying WhatsApp messages and photos she said related to the employment dating from June, July and September 2021, which were opened to the hearing. A September 2021 photo showed her behind the counter in an apron marked “Melt Gelato”, she said.

She said that when things slowed down after the summer months, she would be working alone throughout the business’s opening hours.

“The minimum I think was 50 [hours]… I have a few weeks where I work less than 20, 19 hours – two weeks in one year. The rest just like that, 70, 60, 80 hours,” she said. “Because one colleague was sick, broke the nail, I worked every day in the coffee shop, 15 hours per day.

She said that the stress of the job was such that she started to wake up at night with the thought that she needed to go to the shop and “check the fridge”.

Ms Popa’s evidence was that her employer’s practice between January 2022 and the end of her employment was to pay her for 19 hours a week via payroll while making variable payments of up to €100 some weeks. Mr Asmussen submitted that on this basis she was being underpaid by €445 to €545 a week in breach of the Payment of Wages Act.

“We refute that,” Mr Wall said of the wages complaint.

Ms Popa said she knew one of the owners, David Marsh, was monitoring her on CCTV because he would phone the shop if she went outside.

The complainant said that after she told her employers she was pregnant in September 2022, Mr Marsh’s wife, Sarah Clarke, said she was “not entitled to stay home” and that they would “find somebody else to do the work and I’d lose the job”.

The company’s position is that Ms Popa broke her service and added that there was a break in her service between April 2022 and October 2022, but that she made visits to the store with her children and the directors gave her money at the time.

“I was working all this period. They throw me like a few hundred, you know, for 70 hours what I work that summer,” Ms Popa said.

In addition to the seven distinct complaints under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 and the wage claims, Ms Popa is also pursuing the firm for alleged breaches of the Terms of Employment Act 1994; the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977, the Maternity Protection Act 1994 and the Employment Equality Act 1998, as she alleges discrimination on the grounds of gender and family status.

Adjudicator Roger McGrath adjourned the case this afternoon with the cross-examination of the complainant has been held over to the next hearing date, which is yet to be scheduled by the WRC.

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