To think this company is breaking the law somehow?

[Hocusypocus]

DP is in a supervisory role at a fairly well known High Street company and is charge of the team on nights. He's been there for three years and more often than not he will be underpaid at the end of the month, sometimes it is just any overtime that's missing but sometimes it's several entire night shifts worth of pay.

This morning he's having to deal with an angry bunch of staff members (the night team he supervises) who've mostly all been underpaid, again, some by several hundred pounds.

He doesn't deal with pay roll, that's not in his remit. He's also missing just over £100.

When this happens, which is often, he takes it up with the store manager who simply says it must have been a mistake and whatever is owed will be added onto the next month's wages. 'if' it is paid back then the staff then find themselves paying more tax the following month because they are essentially paid more, even though its what they are owed.

Store manager claims nothing can be done at the point of the incorrect wages being paid and they have no choice to wait until the next pay. The missing wages is not always returned, at one point DP was waiting several months to be reimbursed for a period of work he was underpaid for.

What is going on here?

Have told DP to get in touch with the regional manager, he's going to try and get in touch with them this morning.

The store has already been monitored for under performance apparently. The store manager is often flapping about not falling within budget, which is why I suspect this could be a deliberate attempt to save money.

Put in a collective grievance, make it official

I'd be tempted to go to HQ so the people at the top are aware of what is going on at one of their stores.

Is there anything to actually stop your DH ringing the HR department himself and ask them to look into it or write to them to make a record of all the times he's been underpaid.

Is anyone a member of a union? That would be another route for help with this. Might be worth people joining, if they aren't already members.

The tax thing is unfortunate, but that's how it is, whatever you get in a particular pay run, they assume you get that every time. It does work out in the end though.

But repeated 'mistakes' over pay, that always seem to fall in the company's favour, seems a deliberate attempt to manage cashflow, by always paying a proportion of wages late, or not at all. This is very worrying, particularly with the number of companies that are going bust, or undertaking severe cost cutting exercises these days.

It will impact on universal credit and benefits as well which is perhaps more critical when we are talking low end wages. It is a very poor way to deal with staff and am sure HO would be interested in sorting it out

Oh, that's a good point RB, re: universal credit. Perhaps companies shouldn't pay people 4 weekly at all as they could end up with less money overall due to incompatible systems. Must also be difficult to budget against monthly direct debits too.

Can people stop making up rubbish about tax. Higher tax is based on an annual cumulative amount of pay, you will not get taxed at higher rate because they pay you more in one month than the next unless you were a higher rate taxpayer. Stop making things up you clearly know nothing about.

He's getting the contact number for the regional manager now.

A few months ago the store manager was trying to cut down the nights (because its costing too much she says) and put some of the night team onto days (far less money for the workers) so she could have just two night shifts a week instead of five.

She trialled this and realised its not possible for the store to function at the required level, without the night shifts staying as they were. Not enough stock was being cleared in the day, they had a back log of pallets and no room to store them. She reluctantly reinstated the five nights per week as she had no other option, but did so through gritted teeth as apparently its costing too much money.

An example of how badly underpaid some employees have been:

A new night team worker started and on his first wage he was missing £200 and from this wage (today) he's missing £500. This isn't a well paid job as it is given the physical toll it takes, but a night shift worker there will earn on average £100 per night - so this one man has basically worked a whole week for free.

This really is quite shocking. I used to work with a company where I did regular overtime. The amount I was paid was often wrong and the company didn't feel like it was important to actually give us a pay date. We would be paid anytime between the 1st and the 8th of the month! I loved working there but left after just under a year because it was so badly organised

DP has signed up to the union but the others on his team haven't.

Collective grievance, has more clout than one person complaining. It's also very easy.

One letter agreed and signed by however many want to put their name to it.
Simple letter
This is a collective grievance.

We the undersigned have not been paid correctly since ????
Each month we are between £xxx and £xxx down.
Here are copies of wage slips and time sheets/diary pages/whatever format you use.
Blah blah.
Signed and dated.
You just need to send to correct person in the company.
And keep copies.

Definitely union and HR

This always seems to peak around Christmas, I remember last Christmas was hell because the store manager (again) tried to take the night shifts away, DP was massively underpaid, we couldn't afford much if anything for Christmas as I was on maternity leave and not entitled to SSP. It was miserable.

Luckily I have an income again now so we won't completely go without but this is terrible for the workers with young families and only one income, also I agree about those on UC being completely screwed over by a system like this

If they have access to an intranet the first thing I would do would be to look at procedures on payroll. In particular to work out the cut off points for notifications. So if the pay period is 1-28th November payroll there be a date (for example 14th) by which managers would have to input payments for then to go in the pay run. If you know this you’re ina stronger position because you either know your overtime/night shift was for after the cut off point (or too close to it for the manager to realistically have processed) and hence you know to expect next month or you know you should be due it. He should then be able to agree something sensible with the manager eg 2 days before cut off she will advise of extra payments. Then everyone should know where they stand.

Have read all of these replies to DP who's sat fretting.

He's going to send a message to all of the staff he supervises telling them about filing a collective grievance, he's just taking down notes of everybody's payments and how much they're owed.

Hocusypocus this will adversely affect anyone on Universal Credit as it will affect their claim.

It sounds like the company is in dire financial troubl;e and using wages to prop them up. Your DH can contact ACAS, and he might also want to contact the Inland Revenue. They could audit.
If the company goes under the staff wont get their wages back. So dont feel bad about dropping them in it.

To add it is possible the manager is under great pressure and so deliberately deferring costs to “protect” the budget that month. And it is hard to recover from without being obvious to highe manager as otherwise you’re taking an extra hit in a month. Not ghat this would be ok in any way but I could see how it could happen.

He should absolutely contact his union about this.

@UpstartCrow @EmeraldVillage

Both of your posts is exactly what I suspect is happening. I've been saying this to DP for months

I used to work for one of the large German supermarkets. We were ways told that we receive our basic plus any extra earned up to a certain cut off date in the month thereafter any overtime earned after that date rolled over to next months salary

It's against the law, regardless of what it says on an employment contract.

It might also be a crime, if the underpayment takes people below NMW for their hours worked. Call acas 0300 123 1100 and see what they say.

Underpaying employees is a really big deal - especially if it seems credible it's more than a one-off error. The other thing is that it will impact on benefits you receive unfairly (as mentioned) and you'll get investigated by HMRC before you get your money sorted out.

Go to the union.
it’s “unlawful deduction of wages”

Collective grievance and union support is absolutely the way forward.

IT will have a massive impact on those who claim universal credit.

I don't know whether this is relevant but have been told that there's a wage budget that is calculated by the stores earnings, a percentage of those earnings is used to pay the wages. I'm not familiar with retail so unsure whether that's the norm.

As the store has been under performing and not making as much as the higher ups would like, I strongly suspect that is why wages are "going wrong"

But morally and legally they surely do have an obligation to pay people for their contracted hours, on time, regardless of how well the store is doing.

Just to reiterate in case anyone didn't see, this company is [ *post edited by MNHQ]. I've searched online for employee reviews and it's staggering how many people nationwide are having this very problem with the company.

Important: send your grievance to other people - not the store manager. He/she may be (is, obviously) fiddling the books to get paid a much larger Xmas bonus. Don't point that out, but as even I can spot what's going on, you can rely on someone else doing so.