A video editor in the RT\u00c9 newsroom has lost a \u20ac360,000 employment rights claim after a ruling that she failed to establish in evidence that she was an employee during the relevant period.<\/p>\n
Maebh Keary di Lucia claimed she was denied pay-related statutory entitlements and her earnings were suppressed because she “misclassified” as a contractor from 2004 to 2011, when she was working shifts in RT\u00c9.<\/p>\n
Ms Keary di Lucia said when she subsequently received a contract of employment it “incorrectly” stated that she started work at the national broadcaster in 2011.<\/p>\n
That meant her service was not recognised, her advancement on the pay scale for her grade was delayed, and she has been denied a long-service allowance since summer 2024.<\/p>\n
All in, she said she had been left short in the region of \u20ac360,000.<\/p>\n
She pointed to determinations by the Department of Social Protection, the Social Welfare Appeals Office, and the Revenue Commissioners that despite being paid via invoice, Ms Keary di Lucia had been an employee prior to receiving a contract of employment in 2011.<\/p>\n
Ms Keary di Lucia said that in response to “consistent findings” of “misclassification”, RT\u00c9 had “solely paid PRSI”.<\/p>\n
“They\u2019ve paid the State, but they have not repaid me,” she said.<\/p>\n
RT\u00c9’s lawyers said the WRC had no jurisdiction to rule on the case due to time limits in the Workplace Relations Act.<\/p>\n
Ms Keary di Lucia said she was being denied her rights under EU directives, requiring the WRC to set time limits aside.<\/p>\n
Ms di Lucia said she wrote to a manager arguing that she ought to be on staff starting in February 2007 and pursued a dispute to the Labour Relations Commission in 2008.<\/p>\n
At the WRC case last year, broadcaster Colm \u00d3 Mong\u00e1in appeared as a witness and gave evidence on a conversation he overheard in May 2008 in the RT\u00c9 news department between a manager and a senior video editor responsible for rostering.<\/p>\n
“I heard [the manager] tell [the senior editor] that he should only use Maebh as a last resort until this thing had blown over. I was surprised by that because Maebh was very much a go-to video editor,” Mr \u00d3 Mong\u00e1in said.<\/p>\n
The LRC decided it had no jurisdiction, Ms di Lucia said. “They took a sidestep,” she said.<\/p>\n
Asked by adjudicator Christina Ryan whether she had made further requests about her working conditions, Ms Keary di Lucia said: “I didn\u2019t, because of the evidence Colm \u00d3 Mong\u00e1in gave”.<\/p>\n
“I became very stressed and my hair began to fall out. I felt I could not pursue the issue,” she said.<\/p>\n
In her decision, published today, Ms Ryan wrote that Ms di Lucia’s complaints all relied on a finding that she was an employee at the relevant time.<\/p>\n
She found the evidence before her was “not sufficient” to allow her make that finding.<\/p>\n
Though Ms di Lucia had presented some 4,400 pages of documents in support of her case, “it was not opened, explained or verified in oral evidence by the complainant”.<\/p>\n
“In those circumstances, I am unable to attach evidential weight to that material,” Ms Ryan found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A video editor in the RT\u00c9 newsroom has lost a \u20ac360,000 employment rights claim after a ruling that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-398147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398147","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=398147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}