Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Gavin  Lyons

Pjb Management Billsave

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-00040348-002

10/10/2020

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 27 of the Organisation of Working Time Act, 1997

CA-00040348-003

10/10/2020

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 27 of the Organisation of Working Time Act, 1997

CA-00040348-004

10/10/2020

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Regulation 15 of the  European Communities (Organisation of Working Time) (Mobile Staff in Civil Aviation) Regulations 2006 - S.I. No. 507 of 2012

CA-00040348-005

10/10/2020

On terminating his employment with the respondent the complainant says he did not receive the correct wages. His salary worked out at €500 weekly and on completion of the final working week he was only paid €4,.00

Payroll responded to a query by saying that he had to work a minimum of four hours a day to get paid and that his device had not registered working over that each day in the final week.

This was the only occasion during his employment when this had arisen.

Nowhere in the contract does it state this and he believes he is entitled to payment for any work done.

For the last month working for the company he received ‘Covid pay‘ as wages without being topped  up for the hours worked, and he did not receive any public holiday pay, or for six hours weekly training during lockdown.

He  wrote the company stating what he believed was owed and got no response.

During a conversation with payroll he was informed that because of Covid they were not doing holiday pay and that giving him €358 each week was generous, which in fact €304 was from the social welfare and €54 from the company.

The respondent submitted very detailed spreadsheets detailing the payments made to the complainant and says that, on the basis of these figures, there are no further payments due.  

The respondent says that the complainant worked on only forty-one days but received payment for one hundred and thirty-nine days at the rate of €393.89 per week.

In fact, based on a calculation of days paid and worked, and including annual leave payments, there has been an overpayment to the complainant of €622.00.

As will be clear from the submissions above, notably that of the respondent there was a good deal of detail before the hearing, for which the online format is not best suited.

That said, the detailed spreadsheet had been submitted to the WRC some days in advance of the hearing on June 2nd and forwarded to the complainant that same day.

The complainant adopted a rather casual approach to the hearing, seemingly unaware that the burden of proof in such cases rests with him.

The natural difficulties associated with online hearings were not improved  as he participated in the hearing from a stationary car and on his mobile phone.

This is hardly ideal in a case such as this where detailed records are being discussed, and reliance is being placed on written documentation, and the complainant was hazy and unconvincing about details.

In his written comment (before the hearing) on the respondent excel spreadsheet containing the payment details he criticised the document ‘as an utterly deplorable attempt at extracting money from me and an attempt at deflecting from his own duty’.

If this relates to the overpayment the respondent made it clear that it was not seeking to recover the overpayment. The complainant’s other comments were largely a re-statement of what appears in his submission above, and were weak on precise detail.

However, neither in this written response nor in the course of the hearing did he mount any convincing rebuttal of the respondent’s figures. In fairness, the situation was complicated by the application of the regulations regarding pandemic payments and work, according to the respondent.

At one stage during the hearing there was a detailed assessment of a six week period following the lockdown.  In the course of ths the respondent was able to demonstrate that no payments were outstanding in respect of wages (Complaint CA-00040348-002.)

The position about annual leave is somewhat different.

The respondent accepts that the complainant was due 3.28 days annual leave and was paid for only one. However, it then discounts the 8.5 days’ wages overpayment by this outstanding balance of 2.28 days, leaving the complainant the better end of this transaction by €620. (Complaints CA-00040348-003 and 004).

The complainant did not make any submission in relation to CA-00040348-004 which related to public holidays. Four public holidays fall within the cognisable period and any under-provision in that regard is covered by the six days’ overpayment

Complaint CA-00040348-005 is an error as it is made under the European Communities (Organisation of Working Time) (Mobile Staff in Civil Aviation) Regulations 2006 which do not apply in this case.

None of the complaints are well founded.

For the reasons set out above none of the complaints CA-00040348-002, 003, 004 or 005 are well-founded.

Wages, Annual leave, public holidays, pandemic payments