Writing in the Guardian, journalist Saša Uhlová, said the week of work was “hell” filled with “tears of rage and exhaustion”.
Ms Uhlová said she worked an 11-hour shift one day where she “barely” had time for a bathroom break.
She worked in a hotel located in a small town roughly 50km from Dublin and got the job through an Slovak-agency based in the Czech Republic, her home country.
On her first day, she worked with two other female colleagues, who are Slovakian. Later it was revealed that previously five housekeeping staff were hired to work the same shift.
Today’s News in 90 seconds – 19th September 2024
The women were required to keep in constant contact with their manager on Whatsapp. They were also shouted at by management to converse with each other in English, despite this not being their first language.
The Deník Alarm journalist said: “As shifts go, today is terrible, really terrible.”
For 11 hours she hardly stops with “less than 10 minutes for us to each lunch” and is constantly messaged on Whatsapp by her colleague to hurry up.
Later in the day, Ms Uhlová realises that her hours are not being monitored and she has been working two hours extra for free to finish all assigned tasks.
A colleague later “screams” at Uhlová that she is “completely stupid” for forgetting to clean a room, a symptom of the pressure the hotel has put the staff under.
Lack of contracts, issues with pay and tracking hours was experienced by all workers in the hotel, according to Ms Uhlová.
“The underlying system is clear to everyone: they pay for as few hours as they can get away with,” Ms Uhlová said.
She also said that for two and a half months, another worker did not receive a PPS number as the hotel allegedly withheld a contract from her.
This meant that the hotel “kept taking 40pc of her earnings [in tax].” This worker was also promised more than minimum wage to return to her job with the hotel after leaving, but this promise was broken. “And the workload didn’t get better, it got worse,” she told the journalist.
Another Slovakian worker told Ms Uhlová that she as well as her boyfriend are stuck working in Ireland to pay off their debt.
The woman also shared that she believes she “should have stayed in Slovakia and worked for €4 an hour there, rather than put up with what she has to do here in Ireland”.
Confusion regarding payslips also emerged in the journalist’s own case and she was told by colleagues that if she leaves the job early she “won’t be paid at all”.
“Every employee has a right to one day off a week. But because there aren’t enough staff, some haven’t had a day off in weeks. In the schedule sent out, the hours change all the time, but the underlying system is clear to everyone: they pay for as few hours as they can get away with. Sometimes people work only from early morning until 11am, and then again late at night. The hours in between are completely unpaid,” the journalist wrote.
Several days after Ms Uhlová notified the duty manager that she was leaving, she was contacted “suddenly” by the manager for her bank details and asked if she received a PPS number.
She shared in response that “I assume the hotel has found out that I am a journalist because I told some of my colleagues before I left”.
“I was told when I took the job that it paid the Irish minimum wage, then €10.50 an hour, before deductions of €62.40 a week for board and lodgings and €3 a week for use of the laundry facilities. I don’t know how much I should have earned, because after I left I couldn’t get a PPS number so too much tax was deducted. Eventually I got sent €369 for eight days’ work,” she said.
