paid cash in hand - sacked after false accusation - what recourse

[Tortington]

son ( 19) bit naive - we dont claim any benefits - we have no need to fiddle anything ...got a job in a paper shop, was paid from the till each week - we didn't know this - he gave us board money and that was the end of our involvement really.

so today goes in for wages and was told that money had been missing and so he was sacked and he wasn't getting paid most of his last wage as the alleged money stolen was deducted from wage.

ds DEVESTATED comes home - hasn't enough board to give us - but gives us every penny of the money he has been paid.

I told dh to go to the shop and sort it out - either ds had been stealing - in which case police should have been called

or

he gets paid his money

anyway dh sorted it out and he got what was due - but now hasn't got a job.

I think this is a trick by the shopkeeper, he tends to employ school leavers and my feeling is that he probably does this a lot to people who either don't know their rights or who are too scared to do anything in case of benefit mix ups.

i am planning to phone tax office tomorrow to tell them that the guy isn't paying tax or NI

but wondered if there was any recourse for son? i am thinking probably not as he was only employed there for a couple of months.

he is devestated, he's had bad luck after bad luck with jobs over the last year and only last week he was telling me how good he was at his job. which was nice to hear - that he believed in himself :(

If he was only there for a couple of months then no, no right to claim unfair dismissal. He has to have at least one year's continuous service and if he starts a new job on or after 6th April that goes up to 2 years.

Was he given any notice? If not then he could claim for that. It would be wrongful dismissal but unless he has a written statement of employment particulars claiming for more than a week or so would be tricky. The employer could try to claim that this was gross misconduct worthy of instant dismissal but with all the other stuff it just looks like an incompetent employer and who knows what other things he's not doing that he should be? That could significantly weaken that defence if anything else turned up.

If your husband hadn't got his money then I would be saying to make a claim for unlawful deduction of wages - even shop workers that can have missing money deducted from the till have a cap on how much they have to pay back.

Has he been paid the national minimum wage? If not then he should make a claim to an employment tribunal and has the employer been paying him gross or net? The employer should be ensuring employees tax is paid so shopping him to HMRC as revenge might be the only action you could take but be careful if your son has been colluding in tax evasion.

he has been paid net - so in theory the tax and ni should have been being paid - but there is no wage slips or anything.

thanks anyway

You could try to get the notice out of him but much more satisfying to shop him to the revenue. I would if someone messed with me and mine.

Once HMRC start digging they'll find other stuff. Dodgy people don't tend to just behave badly in one area. He's probably fiddling other stuff too. Even if he has being doing everything properly an investigation is no fun.

No point pretending I'd be professional because I wouldn't in this case

pmsl ty vm

;i rang up and shopped the bastard today