late being paid - their fault or mine?

[BettyFriedansLoveChild]

I work as an hourly paid lecturer for a large uni - my start date was the beginning of this October. I was expecting to be paid for my first month's work at the end of October, so when my pay didn't materialise in my back account I contacted HR, who informed me that I had failed to agree in writing to the terms of my contract by a specific date at the beginning of the month, and that I would therefore have to wait until the end of November to be paid.

The thing is, I hadn't agreed to the terms of the contract by that date as I was still waiting for HR to specify in writing my hourly paid rate - I thought that it would have been ill-considered to agree to a contract without having this information. HR didn't provide me with details of my hourly paid rather until several days after their cut off date.

Who is in the right? Can they make me wait until the end of November to be paid for the work that I did in October? Or am I able to insist that they pay my October wages to me now?

[flowery]

Well, you are right it was ill-considered to agree to a contract without an agreed rate of pay, so you are partly at fault for starting work before that had happened. They are also at fault for not making clear what the payroll deadline was and providing the information promptly.

But you can state their shortcomings and "insist" all you want, ultimately payday is (I imagine) a week on Friday anyway, so however much fuss you kick up, are you realistically actually going to get paid sooner than that?