Retail tops list of employment law breaches, WRC finds

Inspectors from the Workplace Relations Commission identified 1,760 breaches of employment law during 2020

Last year, employers paid back around €1.6 million in unpaid wages to workers after breaches were detected by WRC inspectors.

Around 7,500 employers were investigated for potential breaches of workplace rules during the pandemic last year, according to new figures.

The sectors with the most serious breaches were retail, followed by restaurants, takeaways and personal services.

In total, inspectors from the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) identified breaches of employment law in 1,760 cases last year.

Figures supplied to Louise O’Reilly, the Sinn Féin business spokeswoman, show that around 2,000 of the WRC inspections were into ...