A security company paid a worker just \u20ac4 an hour to guard a high-end clothes shop on Dublin\u2019s Grafton Street, a tribunal has heard. <\/p>\n
BGS Security Ltd (BGSS) was accused of engaging in deliberate and systematic \u201cwage theft\u201d before it collapsed last year.<\/p>\n
Security guard Michael Ehigiato is pursuing multiple employment rights complaints against the business, now in liquidation, including for non-payment of wages, excessive working hours and racial discrimination. <\/p>\n
Ehigiato was rostered for an average of 54 hours a week during his roughly three months working at BGSS \u2013 and was on shift for 71 hours one week, the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) was told on Thursday. <\/p>\n
Despite that, he told the tribunal, he only received \u20ac3,000 cash-in-hand from the company. <\/p>\n
Ehigiato\u2019s trade union rep, Nicola Coleman of the Siptu Workers\u2019 Rights Centre, said it amounted to just \u20ac4 an hour for the hundreds of hours her client spent on duty at shops in Dublin \u2013 less than a third of the legal minimum pay for a security worker. <\/p>\n
He was rostered to work at Spar, Mace and Centra convenience stores across the city, as well as the upmarket North Face shop on Grafton Street, she said. <\/p>\n
Coleman quoted multiple texts from Ehigiato to his supervisor chasing arrears of wages. He said some \u20ac2,800 was outstanding. <\/p>\n
\u201cI hardly complain, but today is different, I worked many hours . . . I don\u2019t have a penny with me. I\u2019m totally broke, owing debts,\u201d Ehigiato wrote in one text. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou promised to send me my money. Please, I really need to know when; I am in a lot of debt,\u201d the complainant wrote in another. <\/p>\n
\u201cI will not lie to you. Currently I am left with \u20ac5 in my bank account,\u201d Ehigiato wrote in a third message.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a man working 70 hours a week,\u201d Coleman said. Ehigiato received \u201crepeated and false assurances\u201d which induced him to continue working, she added. <\/p>\n
On March 18th, 2025, Ehigiato received a text from the company telling him the money \u201cwill be sorted by next week\u201d. The text went on to say: \u201cThere are a lot of old workers making up rumours about the company.\u201d<\/p>\n
At that time, 14 former BGSS staff had brought claims for non-payment of wages to the WRC and had won their cases. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe just need our employees to have trust in what we are doing so we can keep going,\u201d the text read. \u201cIf you could please stay working and have some trust and loyalty . . . things will get better,\u201d it added. <\/p>\n
\u2018Humiliating\u2019<\/p>\n
Ehigiato said that on one occasion, when he was working in a shop in Tallaght and went to take a break to eat, his supervisor arrived and told him he was not allowed to use the staff canteen. <\/p>\n
His boss told him to eat at the CCTV station on the shop floor and refused to let him take a chair out with him. Ehigiato said it was \u201chumiliating\u201d to have to eat his meal like this. <\/p>\n
The company continued to hold a Private Security Authority licence to operate static security guards until July 2025, when it was revoked by the regulator. <\/p>\n
The High Court appointed a liquidator, Tom Musiol of Musiol Advisory, to liquidate BGSS last November. A representative of the liquidator, Steven Gyurko, told the WRC he had been unable to speak with \u201cany officer or former officer of the company\u201d. <\/p>\n
Company director Hugh Downes had sold his home in Dublin in August 2025. \u201cWe are hearing rumours that he\u2019s actually abroad. He hasn\u2019t engaged with us on any level,\u201d Gyurko said. <\/p>\n
Ehigiato is one of nine ex-BGSS staff being represented by Siptu in the latest tranche of complaints before the WRC, and the third whose case has been heard. <\/p>\n
Coleman said they were among 20 staff who met her at Siptu\u2019s offices last year. The other 11, she said, were so \u201cfearful\u201d that they opted not to pursue cases. <\/p>\n
BGSS was \u201can operation based on free labour\u201d which systematically targeted vulnerable migrant workers, Coleman said. She said treatment of the workers amounted to racial discrimination. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis systematic and deliberate wage exploitation could not, would not and did not happen to an Irish person,\u201d she said. She characterised it as \u201ccollective wage theft\u201d. <\/p>\n
She said the number of cases brought against BGSS on similar grounds showed \u201cthe gravity and the deliberate nature of the respondent\u2019s conduct\u201d. <\/p>\n
BGSS had cut its labour costs to \u201calmost zero\u201d, gained an \u201cunlawful competitive advantage\u201d over other employers adhering to the employment regulations for the security business, undermined conditions for \u201cevery worker in the sector\u201d and \u201cdistorted fair competition\u201d, Coleman said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A security company paid a worker just \u20ac4 an hour to guard a high-end clothes shop on Dublin\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,156909,20167,6465],"class_list":["post-343048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-north-face","tag-siptu","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343048","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=343048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}