A security guard who said he was left feeling “let down and used” after working unpaid shifts for a Dublin firm has been awarded compensation worth over 40 times the value of the wages he was denied.
The worker, Elly Kiprono Rop, was awarded €45,240 – two years’ wages – on top of orders for €1,088 in pay unlawfully withheld from him and €1,200 for non-provision of contract while he was working for BGS Security Ltd (BGSS) in the summer of 2024.
A Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator said BGSS had shown a “blatant disregard” for workers’ rights and placed its law-abiding competitors at a disadvantage by ignoring the employment regulation order (ERO) for the security industry.
Mr Rop, a Kenyan citizen pursuing graduate studies in Ireland, is the 18th worker in the past year and a half to secure a WRC decision against BGSS. The company now owes ex-staff over €193,000 between unpaid wages and compensation for employment rights breaches.
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The company, whose clients once included Centra, Spar and Supervalu stores in Dublin, had its licence to operate static security guards revoked by the Private Security Authority (PSA) in June.
The worker told the WRC at a hearing last month that he was put to work by BGSS on May 13th last year, working 20-30 hours a week between daytime and evening shifts as a door guard at shops in Dublin city.
Mr Rop said that the company started assigning him extra hours around June last year, but that payment for them was “drawn out” and he eventually left the job short a gross amount of €1,088.49.
Mr Rop said his “only wish was to be paid what was properly owed from [his] labour” and said that although he has “no ill feeling” towards his ex-employer, he felt “very much let down and used” by BGSS.
His representative, David Cotter of the Independent Workers’ Union, said: “In failing to pay its employees, the respondent [BGSS] was the beneficiary of a significant, obvious and unfair advantage over competitors who paid employees in accordance with the Employment Regulation Order.”
He said his client and other workers found themselves “providing free labour” to BGSS while it “reaped the financial benefit”, pointing to the “many cases that had already been heard before the WRC” in relation to BGSS.
He said employers in the security trade were in regular competition for contract work and that if the ERO was undermined, there was a high risk of a “race to the bottom”.
In her decision, adjudication officer Patricia Owens wrote: “I share the view expressed by Mr Cotter, that the practice of non-payment of wages and the flagrant disregard for the ERO places law-abiding companies at significant disadvantage when competing for security contracts, undermines the Joint Labour Committee process and creates a risk of industrial relations instability.”
She upheld Mr Rop’s complaints under the Payment of Wages Act 1991, the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 and the Industrial Relations Act 1949.
She awarded him €1,088 for the outstanding wages, €1,200 for non-provision of a statement of employment terms, and €45,240 in compensation – a sum equivalent to two years’ wages, the legal maximum – for the breach of the Employment Regulation Order.
She said she had taken into account the “egregious behaviour of this employer and its practice of blatant disregard for the rights of its employees” in setting the award, as well as the financial impact on Mr Rop.
