worried about my sister and her working conditions

LegacyUser

Hello,

My sister works in a horse jumping yard looking after horses, she works extremely long hours up to 72 a week with very little time off and very bad pay, think she gets 350 a week regardless of hours worked. she rang my dad this morning very upset as she worked 19 hours yesterday from half 4 am till half 11 that night. but she still had to be in at her normal time of 7 am
my dad wants me to find out exactly what her rights are as she is afraid to rock the boat and loves the animals they also wont give her a payslip so she thinks they aren't paying tax for her so she is very worried over that as well.

if they do sack her after she tries to enforce her rights, if they haven't been paying tax how will that effect her

any advice would be great

Thanks

IsThatSo?

Contact NERA, they are pulling her chain bigtime. Does she have a contract? Details of hours etc should be in that.

AFAIK she is entitled to a minimum rest break, I can't remember what its called, but it applies to the late night/early morning thing and she is entitled to 11 hours away from work, regardless of her starting time, if she works late the night before.

http://www.employmentrights.ie/en/informationforemployees/workinghours/

I get that she doesn't want to rock the boat, thats understandable, but she is being taken advantage of and needs to stand up for herself. She needs to start documenting her hours and conditions.

She needs to find out about her tax situation too, if her employer is not paying her stamps then she would run into difficulty with JA/JB in the event that she was made redundant.

Have a read though this site, it will have all the info you need:

http://www.employmentrights.ie/en/

eimear1

Hey there,
Your poor sis seems in an awful situation. She is entitled to a payslip, and a P60 each year, if they wont give her one or she is afraid to ask, go on to the revenue website, www.revenue.ie and get contact details, she can ring them up with her PPS number and check whether tax and PRSI is being paid on her behalf.
Hope she gets sorted soon, i know sometimes funny hours are expected in that line of work, but they seem to be taking advantage bigtime.
E

whippet

unfortuantly the equine industry in ireland has had questionable work practices for generations.

As an outsider looking in I would say that the owners of stud farms, riding stables etc .. take advantage of the fact that people who work for them are fanatical about horses and are prepared to put up with outragous working hours and relativly low pay.

A family member of mine nearly got sucked in to this enviorment, as a student he used to work summers in a stud farm earning the princely sum of £12 per week (this was about 14 years ago), mind you he did get lunch and dinner on the farm.

This experience turned him off the industry and he forgot all about it until a few years back (he had been riding and hunting all along) and decided that he wanted in to the industry, so he did an Equine science degree in a UK college which allowed him to work in better enviorments and earn real money.

Any advise I would have for the OP would be to contact NERA, but I reckon that if the person in question wants to work in this industry they would have to expect the same type of treatement in most stables.

comongethappy

Hi OP,

A friend of mine used to work breaking yearlings and training horses. She said the exact same thing about her work in terms of hours and time off. Springtime is foaling season, when they have to often stay up in the wee hours of the morning watching the mare to see if she goes into labour.

I think my friend was paid around 350 Irish pounds per week, but she was living on site, so her rent, electricity, heating, food, etc. was all paid for. The €350 pw was literally her fun money for clothes, going out, etc.

Now, she was bullied when it came time to take her holidays or days off or later starts for working into the night... I think for the 1st year she didn't have any holidays, and not 2 days off per week. Then it came the time that she realised that they needed her more than she needed them, and basically told them that she was having the holiday's one way or another.

I sounds like a lot of workers in the equine industry are walked over. Your sister really needs to stand up for her rights. She should keep a diary of all the times she's working, when she hasn't been allowed to take allocated breaks, denial of holidays, etc. She then needs to confront her boss about this. If she's a good hard worker, he denfinetely won't want to lose her. And if he does, he's the fool for it and she's better off without it.