Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Abdulkadir Hussein

G4S Secure Solutions (Ireland) Limited

Representatives

Barnaba Dorda, SIPTU

 The respondent did not attend

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

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

CA-00049297-001

23/03/2022

The complainant commenced working for the respondent as a security guard on September 29th 2021 and he was still working there on the day of this hearing, February 3rd 2023.  He said that he generally works between 50 and 60 hours a week and he is paid €12.50 per hour.  His complaint under the Payment of Wages Act is confined to the first two months of his employment, before he was properly set up on the respondent’s “Javelin” application, which is the system used to roster employees and which provides hours of work information to payroll.  He claims that he was left short of wages because the app wasn’t set up, resulting in discrepancies between his hours of work and payroll.  The complainant tried to get this issue resolved by speaking with his manager and by contacting the HR department.  Some efforts were made to resolve the discrepancies, but the complainant’s wages were still short.  When his employer did not respond to his queries, Mr Dorda submitted this complaint for adjudication to the WRC.

The respondent uses an application (an “app”) known as Javelin which provides employees with details of their weekly rosters and which their hours of work information to payroll.  Employees download the app to their phones.

For the first nine weeks of his employment with the respondent, the complainant wasn’t connected to the app.  He said that he was set up at the end of November.  In the early weeks of his employment, he said that the site manager gave him a piece of paper with his hours written down.  When he arrived at work, instead of clocking in on the app, he phoned the control office to let them know that he was on site, and he phoned again when he was leaving the site.

During these early weeks in his job, the complainant said that he could see that his wages were not in accordance with the hours that he worked.  He said that he couldn’t pay all his bills and he was very anxious.

The following is a summary of the discrepancies identified by the complainant concerning his wages from the commencement of his employment on September 29th until November 28th 2021, corresponding with payroll weeks 40 to 48.

Week 40 ending on Sunday, October 3rd

The complainant commenced working on Wednesday, September 29th.  In his evidence, he said that he worked four 12.5-hour shifts on September 29th and 30th and on October 1st and 2nd.  Based on his hourly rate of €12.50, he should have been paid €625.  His payslip shows that he was paid €587.50, resulting in a shortfall of €37.50.

Week 41 ending on Sunday, October 10th

The complainant worked four 12.5-hours shifts this week, on October 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th, for which he should have been paid €625.00.  He received no time sheet, no payslip and no wages.    

Week 42 ending on Sunday, October 17th

The complainant worked another four 12.5-hour shifts, on October 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th.  He received a payslip and he was paid the correct wages of €625 gross.

Week 43 ending on Sunday, October 24th

The complainant’s records correspond with the respondent’s timesheet which shows that he worked 62.5 hours this week on October 18th, 20th, 21st, 22nd and 23rd.  He was due to be paid €912.50 gross.  He did not receive a payslip and there is no evidence that the net amount due was transferred to his bank account.

Week 44 ending on Sunday, October 31st

The complainant worked four 12.5-hours shifts this week, on October 26th, 27th, 28th and 29th.  He received a payslip and he was paid the correct amount of €625.00 gross.

Week 45 ending on Sunday, November 7th

The complainant worked five 12.5-hour shifts on November 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th.  His time sheet indicates that he worked for 12 hours on Sunday, November 7th, whereas the complainant said that he worked for 12.5 hours.  Including the Sunday premium of €43.00, he should have been paid €824.25 gross.  The timesheet indicates that the respondent intended to pay him €816.28.  On November 19th, he was paid €1,743.75 gross.  This “adjustment” may have arisen from the non-payment of €912.50 in week 43, although the sum of the complainant’s gross wages for the two weeks does not amount to €1,743.75 (€912.50 + €816.28 = €1,728.78).

Week 46 ending on Sunday, November 14th

The complainant worked four 12.5-hour shifts on November 9th, 10th, 12th and 13th.  On Sunday 14th, he covered for a colleague for seven hours at a different location to his normal place of work.  He should have been paid €736.58 gross.

The complainant’s time sheet for this week provides no information about hours of work, but indicates on two lines, “pay query” and payments due of €1,000 and €337.50.  The complainant said that he did not receive a payslip or wages this week.

Week 47 and 48 ending on Sunday, November 28th

The complainant said that he worked four 12.5-hour shifts on November 15th, 16th 17th and 18th.  His timesheet records only three shifts, resulting in a shortfall in pay of €156.25.

The complainant contracted Covid-19 and he was absent from work the following week, week 48.

At the hearing, the complainant provided copies of timesheet and payslips for the remainder of 2021.  Each timesheet and payslip corresponds to a fortnight.  The timesheets are detailed with the hours worked in each fortnight and the complainant said that they correspond with the hours that he worked and that his wages from the beginning of December 2021 are correct.

I have considered the complainant’s evidence and the documents he submitted at the hearing of this complaint.  It is regrettable that the respondent did not attend the hearing to provide clarification regarding the wage discrepancies identified by the complainant.  As an employee who generally works 60 hours a week on very moderate wages of €12.50 per hour, this issue has caused the complainant unnecessary stress and inconvenience.  At the hearing, he told me how he and his wife spent hours trying to figure out the problem with his wages, and, when he was not paid, he was unable to meet his financial commitments.  The respondent had two opportunities to attend a hearing to explain what happened and to put forward their position and they failed to do so.  I find their actions in this regard disrespectful to their employee and to the WRC.

Having considered the evidence submitted by the complainant, I find that, from the commencement of his employment at the end of September, until the end of November 2021, corresponding to weeks 40 to 48, the complainant was left short in his wages of a total gross amount of €3,292.08.  It is apparent that, in week 45, some effort was made to resolve the shortfall that occurred in week 43; however, the discrepancies which were identified by the complainant in respect of weeks 40, 41, 46 and 47 were not resolved.  As a result, there is a shortfall remaining of €1,555.33.  

Section 5(6) of the Payment of Wages Act 1991 provides that, to ground a complaint under the Act, wages must be properly payable:

(6) Where—

(a) the total amount of any wages that are paid on any occasion by an employer to an employee is less than the total amount of wages that is properly payable by him to the employee on that occasion (after making any deductions therefrom that fall to be made and are in accordance with this Act), or

(b) none of the wages that are properly payable to an employee by an employer on any occasion (after making any such deductions as aforesaid) are paid to the employee,

then, except in so far as the deficiency or non-payment is attributable to an error of computation, the amount of the deficiency or non-payment shall be treated as a deduction made by the employer from the wages of the employee on the occasion.

The complainant’s evidence has not been rebutted and I find therefore that, in breach of section 5 of the Payment of Wages Act, wages equivalent to €1,555.33 which were properly payable to the complainant have not been paid. 

I decide that this complaint is well founded.  In accordance with section 6 of the Payment of Wages Act (as amended), I am required to direct the respondent to pay compensation as a net amount.  Estimating the deductions for PAYE, PRSI and USC, I decide that the respondent is to pay the complainant compensation of €1,100.

Failure to pay wages properly payable