Hi! Hoping someone can advise on this.
My company (a big multinational - completely useless in all matters HR) has effed up my maternity pay once again.
Background. Company offers only statutory pay with no enhancements. I have complained in the past about this but to no avail. Fine. Last time I was pregnant, they overpaid me in the last month (was allowed to keep money in the end) and underpaid my pension for the entire period (a mistake that was only picked up by me - they rectified this with a lump sum to my pension fund). The entire time, I had to beg them to send me payslips which I only received in return to work.
Prior to my current maternity leave, the company made a ton of redundancies and essentially got rid of the entire HR and payroll departments. They never advised what or who these departments would be replaced with. I sent an email to upper management asking who would be my HR contact while on leave as it was so messy last time; they provided an email address that was not correct (i.e. they knowingly provided the email of a woman who was not responsible for HR matters), I pointed this out and they said fine, contact Manager X (neither an HR, nor accounts employee - not ideal but I have no alternative).
A coupe of weeks later, I am informed I will be induced, I duly inform Manager X of this and give birth a day later.
Payment for month 1 comes in, looks fine. I received a schedule of payments from the accounts department before leave and looks about right (though I don’t check the exact amount). Payment for month 2 comes in, same. Payment for month 3 comes in - it’s my full pay (actually slightly more than my full pay as they gave me a pay rise effective from April. It is still even slightly higher than that amount. I have no idea how they have arrived at the figure). I inform upper management immediately of the mistake and say I will take out the amount indicated on the payment schedule and ring fence the remaining funds so that I can pay them back to the company. Upon checking the schedule of payments, I see they have actually also underpaid me for month 2. I inform them of this too and request my payslips so I can check what’s going on. I receive a response from manager X saying we’ll sort this blah blah blah.
That was 3 weeks ago, I have chased on multiple occasions. I receive pat responses and promises to send payslips. Nothing. To note, I have no means of accessing my payslips or the HR terminal myself (it’s essentially a bit with whom you open a query) as my email has been blocked. Therefore I have no recourse to anyone outside Manager X and the upper management team cc’d (none of whom seem to give a shit…).
I suspect that they have simply forgotten to commence SMP and are trying to conceal this fact from me until they can rectify it. I am tempted to go in all guns blazing with an email saying they are legally obliged to provide me with payslips on or before payday (I assume they are(?) and having blocked my email account are obliged to send them to me by another means(?)) and also to threaten to report them to HMRC for suspect unlawful deduction of wages. Also to threaten them with tribunal as they have left me without any HR contact to whom I can complain about them. Am I off base here or do I have grounds?
Thankful for any advice at all!