Payment issue

[GlasweJen]

I work in a nightclub part time because the hours sort of work around my study hours, I've been there for about 1 year and I've never recieved an accurate wage from the company. Every week we check our hours and those are the hours for which we are paid but usually we don't actually finish until an hour after the hours set out on the rota. This has been brought to the attention of the management team several times but they just shrug it off and say that's how long they think the job ought to take (cleaning down several bars, the washroom, bar, cloakroom and washroom floors, emptying bottle bins, cleaning bottle bins etc. all in one hour from closing time) but the staff all agree this is impossible.

Several people have complained verbally but nothing gets done, we are all too scared to put it in writing to head office as we fear for our job, the management are known to "squeeze out" employees who stir up too much trouble. The majority of staff are students or in debt and really need the work, in my case my health problems prevent me from finding work elsewhere.

There is also the issue of proving that we are not being paid fairly, the rotas disappear after we've all seen our hours, the time cards on the computer system can't be printed on the accounts of people who have complained in the past and pay slips often have the wrong date on them (mine says 20th July on it when i was paid last week).

Is there anything I can do to make things a bit fairer at work? It would have to be an outside agency for the reasons above as I know that other members of staff wont speak out unless they can be guaranteed complete anonymity.

[GlasweJen]

*bump* I was hoping someone on here could help as it seems matters have gotten worse today, we recieved no payment at all for turning up at training out of normal hours and did not even recieve our usual staff drink that we get as incentive for taking time out of our week to attend these staff training events.

[buzby]

You could always make a complaint to DWP and they'll be investigated. The trouble is if they find to qualms in massaging hours and staff to get the figures they are prepared to pay, it's unlikely they'll play fair if found deficient subsequently.

[GlasweJen]

DWP wont help unless a complaint has been made in writing, how does this one look?





Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing in regards to my employment at your company. I was first employed by **** on Wednesday 14th June 2006, it came to my attention upon reciept of my first payslip on the 21st July 2006 that I was not being paid for all of the hours I worked. Usually I would stop being paid at 4am on Wednesdays and Saturdays and at 3.30am on Friday despite me still working until as late as 5am on those days. I asked fellow employees who told me this is standard practice at the unit and took it up with the (then) trainee assistant manager *** as the club manager was on a leave of absence. She said that this was happening because the work could theoretically be done in this amount of time. I accepted this at the time and continued to work as I had before.

In January this year we launched **** and this brought more work to be done at the end of the night as a result of the ***** but we were not paid for this extra duty. At this point I realised in conversation with my boyfriend that it was unlawful to withhold pay in the way that work was doing. I again spoke to a manager regarding this and also brought up that we had no breaks on duty despite working 6 hours in some shifts. I was told that should we be paid for every hour we worked the workers would simply take longer to clean up in order to get more money out of the company.

I went away and researched employment law and found that the company policy directly contradicts employment law which states that any non-payment is classed as an illegal deduction from pay as I did not give you written permission to not pay me, my hours are not contracted so this non-payment is not in form of a contract, and it is not a legal deduction (i.e it is not tax, national insurance or from the student loans company).

I have also noticed that my last few payslips are marked with the wrong date, usually 1 week after I am actually paid. There is also legislation which entitles night workers to free health assessments to ensure their health is not being affected to their detriment by working nights, to my knowledge none of the employees at the unit has ever had a health assessment carried out by the company.

With regards to hours and taking breaks workers in the unit are entitled to a 20 minute break away from the work station if they are working six or more hours, some of the employees are paid for six hours (and we work more as a result of the company policy above) but these employees do not receive such a break, it is the duty of the employer to offer these breaks though employees can decline to work them. It should also be noted that the shift worked at New Year was completely unlawful under the working time directives where night workers should work no more than 8 hours continuous (we worked for 10 with only a ten minute break).

I am writing this letter in order for the above issues to be addressed. I would like to hear back from you in writing to my home address within 28 days with an outline to how you are going to go about resolving these matters; failure to respond in a satisfactory manner will result in me seeking a court order for the company to improve workers conditions. I would like to politely point out at this stage that the law protects those who “whistle blow” on companies like yours and any dismissal I feel is connected to me sending this letter will also be taken to an employment tribunal on the grounds of unfair dismissal.

Yours faithfully
Jen

[GlasweJen]

I had my flatmate tidy up my English and resequence the letter a bit for me, I'm posting it recorded delivery tomorrow so they should get it Saturday, hopefully I'll have a job on saturday night, i know the law is on the side of whistle blowers but the idea of getting fired is scary with a capital S. Hopefully they'll just hate me for doing it but they must have saw it coming.

[GlasweJen]

bumping this back up and asking a few questions.

I've not posted the letter yet as if i lose this job and don't have another i am up a certain famous creek without a paddle. I have been job hunting but i know the clock is ticking and i will need to post this letter off really soon. I had a promising job on the radar but unfortunately i'm "not suitable" it is genuinely hard to get anyone to look beyond the fact that i collapse a lot. I recieve DLA but not even enough per month to cover rent, I'm a student but get no support during the summer and i can't get money from my mum as i have younger siblings and there isn't much money to be had in the family.

I don't like the idea of claiming benefits but I know if i'm fired at this stage i will have to wether i like it or not but i've no idea where to start the process, my mums always done my DLA forms and I don't know about much else, if i lose my job i assume i'll lose my working tax credits?

Please help i'm about to pull my hair out over this.

[OrangePrimate]

hi jenschnifer

I know you are worried about losing your job by sending in this letter, you could leave a copy of the following laying around for the boss to see!!

taken from dti.gov.uk/employment/employment-legislation/

who can claim for unfair dismissal:
Dismissal for asserting a statutory employment right

Employees will be unfairly dismissed if their employer dismisses them (or selects them for redundancy when others in similar circumstances are not selected) because they have sought to assert one of their statutory employment protection rights either by bringing proceedings against the employer to enforce the right or by alleging in some other way that the employer has infringed the right.
To benefit from this protection, employees do not necessarily have to have specified the right they sought to assert, so long as they made it reasonably clear to the employer what that right was.
Provided that they have acted in good faith, employees are protected regardless of whether or not they did in fact qualify for the right they sought to assert and regardless of whether or not that right had in fact been infringed. The rights covered by the protection are those relating to:

• written statement of employment particulars;
• itemised pay statement;
• guarantee pay;
• remuneration during suspension on medical grounds;
• time off for public duties;
• time off to look for work or make arrangements for training prior to redundancy;
• time off for antenatal care;
• protection against unlawful deductions from pay;
• protection against unlawful receipt of payments by employer;
• protection against detriment in health and safety cases;
• minimum period of notice;
• deduction of unauthorised or excessive union subscriptions;
• requiring the employer to stop payment of a contribution to a union's political fund;
• detriment by any act, or any failure to act, on trade union grounds;
• time off for trade union duties and activities or training;
• protection against detriment in cases relating to Sunday shop or betting work;
• time off for employee pension scheme trustee duties or training;
• time off for employee representative duties or candidacy;
• working time, rest periods, breaks and annual leave;
• making a public interest disclosure;
• time off for study or training;
• pregnancy, childbirth and maternity;
• maternity, paternity and adoption leave;
• parental leave;
• time off for dependants;
• the right to request flexible working arrangements.

Similar protection is provided for where action is taken to enforce an employee's right to the national minimum wage (see Dismissal relating to the national minimum wage), or working tax credit (see Dismissal relating to the Tax Credits Act 2002) and where an employee takes certain actions under the Transnational Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 1999 (see Dismissal relating to the Transnational Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 1999), the European Public Limited-Liability Company Regulations 2004 or the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 the Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Consultation by Employers and Miscellaneous Amendment) Regulations 2006 or the European Cooperative Society (Involvement of Employees) Regulations 2006.
There is no qualifying period of service for employees who wish to complain that they have been dismissed for one of the reasons described in this section.

[OrangePrimate]

forgot to mention, there are also quite a few rules ref night working, that if your employers are not following they could get themselves in some hot water with!
good luck

[GlasweJen]

thing is between me getting unfairly dismissed and a tribunal ruling that it was indeed unfair dismissal i have a negative income. I'm in the famous student predicament of having a just below maxed out overdraft and practically no credit rating, grant doesn't kick in until October (God bless SAAS) and my work aren't exactly famous for playing fair.

I'm not a member of a trade union so I have no backing in this as I could get fired for even hinting at the issue during shift and everyone knows it, as it is only 2 other employees know i'm doing this and the three of us never mention it, not even when we're alone together, it's so bad that they don't know who each other are. I wish I could go into the general staff area and stick a notice up, a petition maybe, but that wont ever happen as every name that appears on it will just be treated rotten until they quit under the pressure, that's the sort of company this is.

Also we've been led to believe that one of the directors is a lawyer so i'm not so sure we can fight this so well as they have infinite free legal

[GlasweJen]

here's a thought, if the director is a lawyer does that mean that the company is in a stronger position for having a lawyer or a weaker position as they let this happen when they know the law?

[GlasweJen]

I posted the letter 1st recorded this afternoon, i've decided that if i let something silly as being fired scare me out of it no one will ever take this company on. As it is I may have chosen exactly the right time to do it as they are opening a new unit soon and bad press could ruin their latest venture. My next shift after tonight is Saturday then midweek, I hope i'll have a job come that day, Wish me luck!

[patdavies]

Originally Posted by Jenschnifer

here's a thought, if the director is a lawyer does that mean that the company is in a stronger position for having a lawyer or a weaker position as they let this happen when they know the law?

Depends on what area of law he specialises in I guess

[GlasweJen]

i read in a legal textbook (really doing my homework now) that there's a time limit of three months for this type of complaint, would that apply here as I still work for the company and was told by managers that the policy was legal? I should mention here that I have learning difficulties and have real problem understanding such in-depth law issues, I took my employers word as being true as I didn't realise that they could lie about this sort of stuff.

[GlasweJen]

I realise I'm not getting many replies to this thread but I'll plod on writing it anyway as there may well be someone in a couple of months time who finds themself in my boat.

So reading through more law textbooks and found this
Another recent development is an apparent softening of the previously quite hard like taken with claimants whose applications arrived late because they had recieved poor advice from their legal advisers. Some recent case law suggests that such situations are more likely to fall into the 'not reasonably practical' category than used to be the case. For example in Marks and Spencer v Williams-Ryan (2005), the court of appeal help that it was acceptable for a tribunal to hear a late claim where the claimant had recieved misleading or insufficient advice about time limits that applied. In this case Mrs Williams-Ryan had been under the impression that she had to exhaust all Marks and Spencer's internal appeal mechanisms before she could bring a tribunal claim in respect of her dismissal. The same is true of discrimination claims. In Chohan v Derby Law Centre (2004) the EAT reached a similar conclusion where poor legal advice had been given and that was the reason for the late arrival of the claim form (Javid 2005)

Taylor S and Emir A (2006) Employment Law - An Introduction Oxford University Press, UK

I recon as we were always told our director was a lawyer that I could argue I had reasonable cause to believe that the company policies and procedures would be legal as he would know where all the lines are drawn?

[GlasweJen]

Another reason why I never pursued the official grievance procedure before (and I'm really hoping someone can help me with this) is we don't have access to our procedure. The grievance form is on our companies intranet which can only be accessed from the unit, as the general staff computer regularly breaks down we don't have enough access to write and submit a grievance. Also we work nights, we would have to come into work early )which is frowned upon and also the management would know exactly what you're doing and single you out for the less desirable jobs) to write the grievance or do it during work hours (as we have no breaks) but this is almost impossible as there is so much to do. Most issues are raised verbally with the management team and it's like water off a ducks back, they pay almost no attention. I complained that I was smacked on the bottom by a male member of staff during a busy shift while carrying an armful of roasting hot glasses and was told by the manageress "that's just personx you should get used to his banter"

[patdavies]

Originally Posted by Jenschnifer

do it during work hours (as we have no breaks) but this is almost impossible as there is so much to do. Most issues are raised verbally with the management team and it's like water off a ducks back, they pay almost no attention. I complained that I was smacked on the bottom by a male member of staff during a busy shift while carrying an armful of roasting hot glasses and was told by the manageress "that's just personx you should get used to his banter"

Depending on the length of your shift, you are legally entitled to breaks from work.

As for personx. it's not banter, it's sexual harassment