Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Loyal painters get brush-off from Ritz
Pair struggle to find out who hired them after being dumped
AFTER 13 years doing the same job at one of Britain’s poshest hotels, this was a shocking way to be let go.
“I was painting a radiator cover in the lobby of the Ritz and a manager said this was my last day of work, pack up your tools and go,” said Derek Gil.
“I had 10 minutes to pack up, with no explanation.
“I was followed out, handed in my security pass, and the manager just said ‘thank you and good luck’.”
Another painter and decorator at the hotel, Chris Kierepka, had been sent on his way in the same brutal manner only weeks before.
He’d spent five years at the hotel, where afternoon tea costs from £57, beef or duck as a main course in the Michelin-starred restaurant costs £90, and a suite for the night starts at £820.
Both the men are now taking their cases to an employment tribunal, claiming unfair dismissal, but their first hurdle is identifying who they should be complaining about.
It sounds like a simple question, but employment in the gig economy is rarely straightforward.
In a written response to the tribunal, The Ritz Hotel – latest annual turnover £46million – states it did not employ the pair, saying maintenance services were outsourced to a contracting company, D Webster Limited.
The submission from D Webster Limited states that the pair were self-employed sub-contractors who were in turn provided by a third outfit, Construction Workers Guild Limited, and that it had no control over who the Guild sent on jobs or how the jobs were carried out.
Derek and Chris say that they were paid through Construction Workers Guild before being switched to payment by a fourth company, Guild Resources Limited.
This company has written to the tribunal saying that payment was in fact made through yet another company, Guild Payment Services Limited. What no one has so far disputed is that for years Derek and Chris regularly worked five days a week at the Ritz and that they were sent on their way with just a week’s extra pay.
“I could not sleep afterwards, I was so shocked,” said Chris.
“I’m married with two children and was trying to get a mortgage to buy a house.”
Derek said: “A bit before I had asked for a pay rise, and was told ‘Maybe it’s time you changed jobs’.”
He believes their case has echoes of the epic Pimlico Plumbers legal battle, which went all the way to the Supreme Court.
The court ruled that plumber Gary Smith, who worked for Pimlico Plumbers for nearly six years, was not self-employed as the company claimed, but a staffer who was entitled to corresponding employment rights.
TUC general secretary Frances O’grady said after that case: “This has exposed how widely sham selfemployment has spread.”
Derek’s contract states that as a