Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

{A Health Care Assistant}

{A Public Body}

Representatives

Shonagh Byrne SIPTU

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 6 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1991

CA-00031591-001

16/10/2019

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 13 of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969

CA-00031591-002

16/10/2019

The Complainant has worked with the Respondent since 2004 as a Healthcare Assistant.

CA-00031591-001

The Complainant complains that the Respondent made an unlawful deduction from her wages on 11th August 2019 of €2,942.00 on 3 occasions over 6 weeks. No notice of intention to make the deduction was received. The Respondent did not comply with its own policy on deductions.

The reason for this was an overpayment. However, the Complainant was not aware of the overpayment. This caused great hardship and upset for the Complainant

CA-00031591-002

The Complainant complains about the deduction of €2,42.00. She was not informed or consulted about this. The Respondent would not engage with her at all. The different deductions have not been explained to her.

CA-00031591-001 & CA-00031591-002

The Respondent was applying the Critical Illness protocol to the Complainant. A mistake had been made and an overpayment paid to the Complainant. A new HR payroll system was put in place and it automatically made the deductions from the Complainant’s wages to rectify the situation.

The Respondent says the complaint is not valid as the deduction was in respect of an overpayment not the Complainant’s wages and does not fall within the Payment of Wages Act 1991.

CA-00031591-002

The Respondent accepts no prior notice was given of the deduction and says they engaged with the Complainant as soon as the issue came to light and gave an advance. The Respondent agreed to provide a statement of the deductions to the Complainant

CA-00031591-001

I have considered carefully the oral and written submissions of the parties.

The Respondent has provided evidence that an overpayment was made to the Complainant over 3 weeks when she received full salary instead of half-salary in error, as the critical illness policy had not been applied.

S1 of the Payment of Wages Act 1991 defines “wages” in relation to an employee as meaning any sums payable to the employee by the employer in connection with her employment. The deduction of an overpayment to the Complainant does not fall within S5 of the Payment of Wages Act 1991 as this sum is not part of wages due.

This complaint is not well founded.

CA-00031591-002

The Respondent gave evidence that a genuine error was made when a new payroll system deducted the overpayments fully from the Complainant, rather than complying with their policy that any deductions be staggered by agreement with the employee over a period.

This undoubtedly caused great hardship and took some weeks to address and rectify. In particular, as the Complainant was ill at the time. Due to the special circumstances of the Complainant outlined, I recommend in this case compensation of €500 euro be paid by the Respondent to the Complainant and the Respondent engage with the Complainant in relation to a payment schedule for her, if this is required.

CA-00031591-001

This complaint is not well founded.

CA-00031591-002

Due to the special circumstances of the Complainant outlined, I recommend in this case compensation to be paid by the Respondent of €500 euro to the Complainant and the Respondent engage with the Complainant in relation to a payment schedule for her, if this is required.

Definition of wages under Payment of Wages Act 1991, deductions of overpayments