Employer not paying extra for bank holidays/sundays

I dont know what to do in this situation but here it goes.. I worked in a sevice station for 2 years with a certain employer up until the end of november and the station closed. A new owner took over the lease so i approached him with a few of my work colleagues and he said drop in a cv, so we did that. 4 of us got a call to go in for an interview. anyways the 4 of us got a job there. He told us we woul;d be on 9 euro an hour( which i was extremely surprised with and extremely grateful as the minimum then was brought back down to 7.65 to my knowledge then) he also told us we would not get paid extra for bank holidays and sundays which i said was okay because i needed the job and with 9 euro an hour i said to myself i couldnt argue with this. I had thought that he had to legally give us extra but i let it slide.. anyway since then there has been a few problems at work with managment and co workers and im becoming recentful of my employer and my supervisor. my hours have been cut from 37.5 to 24 hours a week. the employer has got one of his friends brothers ( who is in his 70's id guess) a retired man who works for him free. i did not have a problem with this at the start as it did not effect my hours but since then it has. also the supervisor works on her own for 4 days between the hours of 6pm till 10.30pm to save costs on wages. (which is another matter i must raise, is she allowed to work on her own for safety reasons) anyways im thinking of approaching the employer to ask him to pay us extra for working sundays and bank holidays now since my hours have been cut. i know we are in recession times and we all have to do our bit but the service station is doing really well and i have seen figures lately and he is being greedy in my eyes using the recession as a front to pay less wages. Any thoughts?