An air conditioning technician pursuing his former employer for unpaid wages says accusations that he was drug-driving in a company van and doing work under the influence are \u201cfalse claims based on wind\u201d. <\/p>\n
However, his former boss has said documents found in the company vehicle when it was recovered by garda\u00ed stated the worker faced being put off the road on foot of a drug test \u2013 backing up his suspicions that the worker had been showing up to work \u201ca little bit off-kilter\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cHis money is in Mullingar. It\u2019s sitting in cash. When he comes to pick it up, our solicitor and the garda\u00ed are going to be waiting there,\u201d the businessman told the Workplace Relations Commission on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
The worker, Nathan Collins, is pursuing \u20ac1,650 from Nical Engineering Ltd in a complaint under the Payment of Wages Act 1991. It is money the company admits it owes to Mr Collins after he quit 10 working days into a new job in September 2024. <\/p>\n
The company maintains Mr Collins owes it a \u201ccounter-debt\u201d of around \u20ac3,500 because of the alleged state of the work van after its seizure. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no denying the money is owed. There\u2019s extenuating circumstances in relation to the behaviour of the complainant at the time of his resignation,\u201d company representative, Hugh Hegarty of Peninsula Business Services, told a hearing. <\/p>\n
Mr Collins said: \u201cMy wages have been paid into a bank account; now you\u2019re telling me I have to drive up and collect cash. That\u2019s against the law.\u201d <\/p>\n
Giving evidence, company director John Masterson said he decided a couple of days into Mr Collins\u2019 employment that he had issues with his work, but said nothing and decided to \u201ckeep going a week or two\u201d. <\/p>\n
Mr Collins then failed to turn up for work on the Monday of what would have been his third week on the job, having gone home to an address in Galway with a company van valued at \u20ac25,000, Mr Masterson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to go straight to getting the guards involved,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause of the way Mr Collins had dealt with [the van], we had to fumigate it and clean it out.\u201d <\/p>\n
Adjudication officer Penelope McGrath asked Mr Collins for his response. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s making a load of false claims on wind. I don\u2019t understand what his claims are. I\u2019m here to get the money I\u2019m owed,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a load of other stuff I\u2019m not going to argue about, it seems pointless.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just told them they could come collect the van, and they said they wanted me to drop it back up. I told them I\u2019d drop it up on the Friday when my wages went through into my account and they started up with the stuff about come up and take cash. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just left the van outside my house and went about my business,\u201d Mr Collins said. <\/p>\n
Ms McGrath said she had all she needed to make her decision and closed the hearing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An air conditioning technician pursuing his former employer for unpaid wages says accusations that he was drug-driving in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-292924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}