Employers making underpayment of wages? Please help

[lottarump]

Have namechanged for fear of job!

If you have been underpaid, is it legal that the company can make you wait a full month for this to be rectified.

Not pence but hundreds of pounds short and happening to lots of employees. The company accept they have made a mistake but are forcing employees to wait until the following month to get it back?

Is this legal.

Thanks in advance.

bump. anyone?

.

It doesn't sound reasonable to me, but I have no idea whether it is legal.

Can you call ACAS for advice?

try community legal advice
I don't know but surely they can't make you wait a month, even if it is most convenient for them.

thanks to both of you. Have been in touch with Cit advice and they think it comes under 'unauthorized deduction of wages'

We are off to the union next, and then looks like we have to raise a grievance with the company. What pisses me off is the fact, that all this will take time, and who pays the bills in the meantime.

What does your contract of employment say? If it says that you should be paid x amount by a certain date then that's what they should be doing. It would be very unusual to make people wait a whole month for a payroll mistake.

The trouble is it may well be an unauthorised deduction, but there's certainly no piece of legislation that says unauthorised deductions must be paid back before the following month. Apart from anything else, by the time you'd made any claim, you would have received it back anyway so you would have no claim. As you realise, the same would apply with a grievance. By the time you've raised a grievance and had it heard, it could well be a couple of weeks anyway, then they could reject your grievance, you'd need to appeal and suddenly it's next month.

Not reasonable though I agree, so I think you should consider maybe putting in a joint grievance anyway, to force them to address the situation, even if it doesn't get you the money any quicker. By doing that you can at least try to get commitment to paying any bank charges or similar incurred.

Might the company be in financial problems at all?

The company is fairly large and well known. I cannot say more than that except that is the reason I have namechanged.

It has been going on for months on end. Some people are fighting for money they earned 3 or 4 months previously. There is terrible staff morale, and it acutally making people unwell. Imagine the thought that payday is on us and you actually dread looking to see if there is the correct money. Some have only got half their wages. To be told you must wait because of a mistake they made and continue to make is dreadful. They don't even answer the phone when you call to discuss.

We have been advised that a group grievance is the way forward. Imagine thinking which bills do you pay and which don't get paid. Then the following month you may get that bit paid but meet with another underpayment. Some people are so stressed that they have to tell a bill company they will pay at the end of the following month, only to not have the money again to do it with.

Contracts state monthly in arrears. So we are being told to wait a further month on top of that.

Would love to name and shame but terrified.

If it's a big company snd has been affecting lots of people for a while I wouldn't be surprised if there were financial problems. Not that that's an excuse of course, but big companies usually have fairly smooth running payroll systems just because of the sheer scale of numbers involved in terms of people and amounts. So this type of disruption would be unusual.

If there's a group grievance happening that's definitely good, but there's not an awful lot you can do apart from that at the moment. Keeping pressure on the union to be firm with management is also important.