Complainant

Respondent

Parties

Tanya  McLoughlin

Brooklyn Flooring Ltd.

Complainant

Respondent

Representatives

  Self - represented

 Did not attend

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-00054253-001

21/12/2022

The complainant has submitted a complaint of an unlawful deduction of €2527 from her wages on the 26/8/2022.

The complainant was employed with the respondent as an office administrator from 19 April 2021 until the 2 /9/2022 when she left owing to the respondent’s repeated failure to pay her wages.

She earned €2500 gross per month, €2,130 net. She worked a 40-hour week.

She submitted her complaint to the WRC on 21/12/2022.

Evidence of the complainant given under affirmation.

 The complainant states that the respondent owns two other companies, but she was employed by Brooklyn Flooring Ltd.

The complainant worked as an office administrator with the respondent’s flooring company from 13/10/2020 until 2/9 /2022, when she resigned due to the repeated non-payment or only part-payment of her wages over a prolonged period from January – August 2022.

Her work entailed taking orders from customers/ organising appointments with customers and general administrative work.

The company went down hill from January 2022, and in August 2022, they lost their slot in a big department store as they were unable to pay the staff assigned to that store.

In August 2022, the respondent’s accountant advised the complainant that while there were payments on the company credit card, there was no reconciliation with the respondent’s bank accounts. The respondent was doing the flooring work for clients on a cash only basis with the result that the company accounts, depleted of these lodgements from sales, were unable to fund staff wages. By this stage the respondent had failed to pay the complainant her August wages, amounting to € 2500. In addition, she was owed 4.33 days annual leave amounting to €499, a total of €2999.

The respondent did make two further payments of €100 and of €500 to her in September 2022, but that was the end of the payments to her. The complainant made many efforts to get the respondent to pay her what she was owed, efforts met with aggression and evasions. The respondent advised the complainant in 2023 that he was in liquidation, but that is not correct, and he is still trading.

The unlawful deduction amounts to €2999.

The respondent though notified of the time and date of the hearing did not attend.

I am required to establish if the respondent unlawfully deducted the sum of €2339 from the complainant’s wages on the 26/8/22.

Relevant Law.

 Section 5 (1) of the 1991 Act states

“An employer shall not make a deduction from the wages of an employee (or receive any payment from an employee) unless—

(a) the deduction (or payment) is required or authorised to be made by virtue of any statute or any instrument made under statute,

(b) the deduction (or payment) is required or authorised to be made by virtue of a term of the employee's contract of employment included in the contract before, and in force at the time of, the deduction or payment, or

(c) in the case of a deduction, the employee has given his prior consent in writing to it.’

Section 5 (6) of the Payment of Wages Act, 1991 identifies a deduction as follows:

“Where the total amount of 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.” 

As a first step in establishing the existence or not of an unlawful deduction, the complainant must demonstrate that the full gross monthly salary which according to the payslips submitted after the hearing is €2384, less the €600 received in September, plus a sum of €499, identified by the respondent in an email of 6/9/22, in respect of 4.3 days owed annual leave, resulting in a combined sum of €2283 is ‘properly payable ‘to her.

On the basis of the uncontested evidence, I accept that the complainant was entitled to be paid her wages and the remainder of her statutory leave entitlement at the cesser of her employment. and that there was no statutory basis for any deduction of either of these sums.

  I find that the refusal to pay her wages for the month of August 2022 plus her outstanding leave entitlements was an unauthorised deduction of €2283 gross and contravened section 5 (1) of the Act of 1991.

I find the complaint to be well founded.

I require the respondent to pay the complainant the total sum of €2283 subject to all lawful deductions.

I find this complaint to be well founded. I decide that the respondent should pay the sum of €2283 to the complainant subject to all lawful deductions

Non –payment of wages.