Karen's Diner ordered to pay former employee unpaid tips
An ex-employee of theme restaurant Karen's Diner has secured a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) ruling that she is due hundreds of euro in unpaid tips, in the third such decision against the chain.
The international theme restaurant chain, which is marketed an interactive dining experience with 'rude service as part of the performance', opened its doors on O'Connell Street, Dublin in 2024.
The worker, Carenin Rosa De Oliveira, quit her job at Karen's Diner after going six months without receiving her share of the money, which she was meant to receive according to her ex-employer's tipping policy, she told the WRC.
It seemed to her that the 'non-payment of the monies owed was accumulating with no end in sight', she added.
READ MORE
The worker's further evidence was that there was 'a general unease among staff concerning the non-distribution of tips and gratuities and service charges'. Her employer 'knew that there was a problem, but kept putting off making any payment', she added.
[
Karen's Diner: 'Sit down and shut up!' one waiter shouts as I eat my flavourless burger
Opens in new window
]
Roberta Urbon, of human resources consultancy Peninsula Business Services, appeared for the restaurant.
Her submission was that the business 'concedes there are some monies owed', the tribunal recorded.
Adjudication officer Penelope McGrath wrote in her decision that the respondent had failed to provide evidence on how the money owed to Ms Rosa De Oliveira ought to be calculated and therefore had not 'repudiated' the worker's claims.
Ms McGrath noted the complainant had told her she 'could not give an exact figure' and had 'erred on the side of modesty' in bringing her claim for that reason.
'I accept that the complainant, who gave very compelling evidence, is only looking for what she says ought to have been paid to her in the course of her employment,' the adjudicator added.
She upheld three separate complaints by Ms Rosa de Oliveira under the Payment of Wages Act, awarding her a total of €796 for the breaches.
In decisions issued in March and April this year, the restaurant's management was directed to pay over €1,200 to two other staff on foot of similar complaints. It had not appeared before the tribunal in response to either of the previous claims.
The decision published on Tuesday in favour of Ms Rosa De Oliveira brings the total sum awarded to former staff of the restaurant to €2,014.
Another former employee, Maria Wilkinson, said in evidence to the tribunal that was told the service charge paid by customers would be 'divided between all employees' and that she had expected that to be worth €1,000 to €2,000. However, she said she never got any share of that.
The adjudicator in that case concluded that there were 'significant tips' being generated by the restaurant but that 'whatever became of the tips is not clear except to the extent that neither the complainant nor her co-workers received any of them'.
He awarded Ms Wilkinson €1,018.40, four weeks' wages, for a 'breach of her rights' under the Payment of Wages Act.
Sarah Butler, a member of floor staff who worked at the restaurant from January to March 2024, secured €200 in compensation for the non-payment of cash tips in her final week of employment.
Ms Butler had also sought compensation for electronic tips she said were not paid to her going back to the start of last year, but that aspect of her complaint was ruled out of time.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
The Irish economy grew by 22% over the past year. Yes, you read that right
Ireland's economic data was always going to be a bit special at the start of this year. But Thursday's figures were mind-bending. It is impossible to overstate the extent to which we now stand out in international comparisons. And this is not just a curiosity – it matters. The economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) , was 22 per cent larger in the first quarter of 2025 than one year earlier, according to the latest estimates from the Central Statistics Office . Think about it. The figures suggest that for every €1 of activity last year, there was €1.22 in 2025. Even comparing GDP in the first quarter of this year with the last quarter of 2024, there is a rise of close to 10 per cent – this is roughly the extent of growth across the euro zone over the past decade. Of course this bonkers data is not real, in the sense that it does not reflect what is happening in the underlying economy in which we all live. How could it? As has been long discussed the headline economic data is entirely distorted by the activities and tax planning of a small number of very big US tech and pharma companies. From time to time, this has created huge distortions in the figures. A decade ago, top US economist Paul Krugman famously described a 26 per cent GDP growth rate reported for the Irish economy (later revised up to over 30 per cent) as 'leprechaun' economics . At the time the figures were distorted by massive tax-driven investments by the companies concerned, including Apple, essentially a manoeuvre by the companies involved to try to keep their tax bills down as international rules changed. READ MORE Now, as one observer put it, we are seeing another 'Krugman' moment. This time the reasons are different. Big pharma companies have been rushing product over to the US to try to get drugs and key ingredients into the market before Donald Trump announces tariffs on the sector. This has led to a surge in exports, feeding into the GDP data. Many of these are manufactured here – and some are made elsewhere but organised by Irish subsidiaries and so also show up in our figures. And so we see a massive surge in Irish GDP in the first quarter of this year. A big – temporary – decline in pharma exports in GDP will follow at some stage, as the firms involved must now have massive stocks jammed into every free warehouse in the US. Much will depend on how the tariffs story plays out. [ Welcome (back) to the era of Leprechaun economics Opens in new window ] Whether Krugman renews his leprechaun offensive or not, let's not pretend this won't be noticed. Ireland's GDP data is not some irrelevance in a quirky economic corner. The amounts of money being moved through Ireland are now enormous. Daniel Kral, chief economist at Oxford Economics , calculates that Ireland – which accounts for 4 per cent of the euro zone economy – accounted for half its total growth over the past year. Analysts have taken to looking at the figures 'excluding Ireland'. How do we pull back from all of this to judge the underlying health of the economy? Total demand in the domestic economy – adjusted by the CSO to remove the multinational factors - rose just 1 per cent over the year. But we need to look under the surface here, too. Consumer spending, a good measure of how we feel, was up by a decent 2.5 per cent. But the overall figure was dragged down by a fall in business investment, presumably reflecting the international uncertainty. So households continued to spend in the first part of the year, but businesses are taking a wait-and-see approach to big capital spending. This is likely to be reflected in the jobs market as the year goes on – and here AI is also changing the game in many sectors. Consumers may get more cautious too. Uncertainty is starting to slow the economy and this is a trend we need to watch as the year goes on. The piece of data that seemed a bit out of line this week was a 30 per cent fall in corporation tax in May compared with the same month last year. This was affected by the comparison with a strong May last year – which the Department of Finance suggests was boosted by once-off factors. Two of our biggest taxpayers, Pfizer and Microsoft – pay significant amounts of tax that month. But the key early indicator for most of the big companies is June – and what happens here will give a good pointer for the year as a whole. The figures do underline one point. It is our huge reliance on the opaque affairs of four or five massive companies – and our exposure to the sectors they operate in, their own performance and complex decisions on how their tax structures are set up. Our latest bout of data exceptionalism again puts Ireland in the spotlight, when it would have been better to keep the head down. It underlines the outsize take Ireland is getting from pharma and tech activity in the EU – both contentious points in the White House. Notably, the US added Ireland to an economic watch list this week, based on the size of our trade surplus. We are very much on the radar in Washington. Our corporate tax take and manufacturing base are looked on enviously not only from the US , but from elsewhere in Europe. [ 'No long-term commitments to anything' – Ireland's economy is experiencing a silent slowdown Opens in new window ] The advance shipping of products again focuses attention on the scale of activity and tax planning in Ireland by big pharma companies. And this causes a rollercoaster of cyclical activity. But what really counts is longer-term, structural issues. Will these pharma giants decide over time – and it would take years – to relocate some of their production to the US? Will their profits and thus tax payments here be hit by Trump's policies? Or will they – or some of the tech giants – alter their corporate structures so that they pay significantly less tax here? It comes down to whether Trump's policies change the way the economic and corporate world operates fundamentally, a fair bit or not much at all. As Ireland benefits from the current system so much, the more it changes, the more risks there are for us. The coming months will tell a lot.
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Nine-figure payouts to Ryanair and Starbucks CEOs are controversial, but Michael O'Leary can point to results
Michael O'Leary has hit his target. Ryanair 's share price stayed above €21 for 28 days, earning him a €125 million bonus if he stays until 2028. The deal has its critics. 'Morally questionable,' said Luke Hildyard of the High Pay Centre, a UK think tank. Others argue such payouts reward luck more than leadership, with cheap oil, index inclusion and billions in share buybacks all helping lift Ryanair's stock. O'Leary might counter that Ryanair shares have more than doubled since the deal was struck in 2019, comfortably outperforming rival airlines. Contrast that with Starbucks , where Brian Niccol was handed a reported $113 million sign-on package last August to replace embattled CEO Laxman Narasimhan. Shares soared 25 per cent on the news, adding $21 billion in market value. READ MORE [ Corporate tax receipts drop 30% as Trump's tariffs bite Opens in new window ] Since then, Starbucks has slashed head office jobs, trimmed menus and promised a return to its coffeehouse roots. But the results remain bitter. Margins and profits are down. Competition remains fierce in China. The stock tanked after last month's earnings miss and has now given up almost all of its Niccol bump. Niccol may yet prove his worth – his turnaround of Chipotle is textbook stuff – but the caffeine hit investors got from his arrival has faded fast. O'Leary, never one to miss a jab, might well look at Starbucks and say: at least I had to do something to get my millions.
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
FD Technologies chairwoman urges investors to back takeover
FD Technologies chair Donna Troy has urged investors to back a £541.6 million (€643.04 million) sale of the Newry-based data and analytics company to US private equity firm TA Associates at a special meeting on June 30th, saying there are risks to it delivering on its full potential as a standalone public company. The company's remaining business, KX, which analyses large data sets in real time to help companies predict and respond to market conditions across the various business areas, may be hampered by 'uncertain public markets' if it needs to accelerate investment to capture opportunities in artificial intelligence (AI). 'Furthermore, FD Technologies is a relatively small player in a large, but fast-moving, fragmented market,' Ms Troy said in a letter to shareholders, contained in documents relating to the planned deal, published on the company's website on Friday. 'Competing with a number of larger, very well capitalised software providers and consequently the FD Technologies, directors are cautiously aware of execution risk to delivering its strategy and the associated value to FD Technologies shareholders.' READ MORE The deal with TA Associates, first announced a month ago, follows a big restructuring at the Dublin-listed company last year. This led to the group selling its former core First Derivatives division to US software group EPAM in a £236.1 million transaction and the spin-off of another business, called MRP , into a merger. It subsequently returned £120 million to shareholders in January through a stock buyback deal. How to manage your pension in these volatile times Listen | 37:00 FD Technologies confirmed that it has secured irrevocable commitments from shareholders behind 56.7 per cent of its stock for the TA Associates deal. It will need approval from holders of 75 per cent of its shares to get the transaction over the line through the mechanism, known as a scheme of arrangement, that TA Associates is using to execute the takeover. Shareholders are being offered the choice of taking cash for their stock or rolling their shares into the bid vehicle. 'The FD Technologies board does not give any recommendation to FD Technologies shareholders as to whether they should elect for the alternative offer [of taking shares in the bid vehicle],' the company said. 'FD Technologies shareholders should determine whether acquiring or holding rollover shares is affected by the laws or regulations of the relevant jurisdiction in which they reside and consider the advantages and disadvantages of electing for the alternative offer, and whether rollover shares are a suitable investment in light of their own personal circumstance.'
