The Employment Tribunal found that he had failed to pay an employee the agreed minimum wage and had then unfairly dismissed the same staff member.
Former waiter José Almeida will receive just over £2,000 compensation after the tribunal ruled that he had been unfairly dismissed from Pizzeria Romana at Charing Cross.
At the hearing on 24 October – the Island’s first employment tribunal hearing – Mr Almeida claimed that he had been sacked after handing a letter to restaurant owner Enio da Costa asking for ‘written confirmation of my weekly working hours as I believe that I am not being paid the legal minimum wage in respect of hours worked’.
Within a few hours of handing over the letter in August, Mr Almeida claims that he was told to leave.
In their written judgment, the employment tribunal says: ‘We have found that Mr Almeida was dismissed because he required his employer to give him information which would allow him to determine whether or not he was being paid the minimum wage.
‘We have also found that he was not paid the minimum wage or his contractual agreement.
We think that the employer must have known that it was underpaying the employee, and that providing the information would expose it to some form of claim by Mr Almeida, and that is why Mr Almeida was dismissed.
‘We regard dismissal in such circumstances as a serious breach of the law and we order that the employer shall pay compensation.’
