#26

oh you can get what is called an ‘advance payment’ (used to be called a crisis loan) while you wait for the initial payment but I think its only about £200 or something

#28

£200 would probably sort me out tbh.

That’s about how much I’ve been underpaid last month, so that would at least make up for what I’ve lost.

#29

they can’t change the amount they pay you without violating your employment contract. there needs to be reasonable consultation and giving you adequate time to prepare (90 days notice is the usual amount iirc)

i would apply for whatever you think you’re entitled to benefits-wise. don’t ask, don’t get.

join a union.

and in future, keep a note of all your shifts tbh.

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#30

put your complaints in writing too tbh, that way there’s a record of everything going forward.

#31

This might be a stupid question but how do I find what my contract is?

#32

it’s not a stupid question! you may need to ask for a copy of your contract from your boss if you can’t find yours. it will have everything there, including agreed on hours and the rate of pay for them, if it’s a zero hours, full time, part time, whatever. compare that to your payslip, boom, you can see what’s what. don’t accept a copy that is unsigned and undated, especially if they wait a few days before giving you it - to me that says they’ve cobbled some bullshit together to retroactively justify wage theft.

if you can prove they’ve been underpaying you, or they’ve been under counting your hours, then you have pretty good grounds for a tribunal.

#33

Well I have 3 payslips (unfortunately I don’t have any others), two from Jan and Dec where it says I’ve been paid £7.50 an hour. And one from Nov where it says I’ve been paid £8.40 an hour.

I worked at least 44 hours last month but it says I only worked 33. I can’t prove that I worked 44 hours though.

Wouldn’t a tribunal piss my boss off though, and leave me with a bad reference?

#34

Might qualify for Working Tax Credits if it’s 30 hours or more. Doesn’t hurt to check what you’re entitled to and can cushion the effects of this sort of thing happening in future. But yeah obviously the correct and most effective thing to look at here is getting things sorted out with the employer, rather than letting the employer get away with shit and replacing their thievery/incompetence with benefits.

#35

I wouldn’t think an employer can give you a bad reference for pulling them up for robbing you?

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#36

yeah that’s dodgy as fuck, if you haven’t agreed to anything and certainly if you haven’t signed anything they need to make this right asap. employers who engage in wage theft are lower than vermin imo.

at most they can decline to give you a reference, but they can’t give you a bad one. if potential employers do query a tribunal, which they shouldn’t cos it’s none of their business, just be honest. if they have a problem with staff who challenge wage theft then they’re also lower than vermin and aren’t worth bothering with.

hope you can get this sorted, i’ve been in similar situations and it’s never less than a horror story. stay strong and don’t let them bully you or confuse you to keep you quiet.

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#37

I think before we go down the road of whether or not you can prove it it’s well worth actually mentioning it to your boss…? There’s a good chance that rather than trying to do you over they’ve just fucked things up.

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#38

aye, sometimes they surprise you and are mortified when it turns out you’ve been shafted and can’t help enough when fixing it.

#39

short term, ask to have your overdraft extended, then talk to your boss and find out what happened

#40

Definitely this. Some chump in HR typing out 33 instead of 44 is well within the realm of possibility. Being paid less may also be an administrative error so your first port of call should just be going in and talking to your manager

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#41

Yeah, this. There must be some record of the hours the staff work somewhere, surely. Unless you work fixed hours each week (in which case this wouldn’t be an issue), presumably there’s some mechanism for staff to clock in and out. Otherwise they wouldn’t know how much to pay anyone.

#42

Hope this all gets sorted with the job mate, that absolutely fucking sucks :frowning:

As a (very) short term solution for some quick cash without having to invest too much time, if there’s a uni near you you can sign up for trials with their psych departments. Usually just either answering questions on doing basic exercises where you look at moving shapes etc, and they can pay a decent amount cause they’re usually pretty desperate for participants. Helped me out of a tight spot a couple of times during my masters.

If you need free advice about jobseekers, or whether you should take your job to a tribunal, Citizens Advice Bureau tend to be good - my mate’s used them before when he’d been underpaid for freelance work and they helped a lot.

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#43

I don’t think I’m on an official work contract anymore since it ended last September, I’m just carrying on there for the meantime until I get a full-time job (at least this will probably give me the kick up the arse I need). From what I’ve read, apparently employers can underpay you if you’re not on a contract and they need to save money… but I haven’t been told.

#44

Just a question, but is there an overtime cut off date?

We get paid for normal wages on the 10th of the month and that is paid for the 1st of the month to the last day of the month (10 days in arrears, 20/21 days in advance). The cutoff for overtime is the last weekend of the month. So if I did some overtime on the 30th, 2nd and 7th, I won’t see that pay on the 10th as it’s after the cutoff date, but in the following month. Make sense? Could be something like that maybe?

#45

The presumption is the previous terms continue, but if they do alter them, they must tell you. However, if they don’t, and you don’t challenge it and keep on turning up for work as usual, you could be viewed as effectively accepting the changes. Which would cause problems if you try going to a Tribunal later.

As others have mentioned above, you need to speak to your manager about this in the first instance to find out what is actually going on here (i.e. whether it’s a genuine mistake, or they have changed your terms, etc), awkward as I realise that is. Otherwise, all you can do is speculate, which won’t solve your problem.

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#46

https://www.gov.uk/fixed-term-contracts/renewing-or-ending-a-fixedterm-contract

Terms still stand if you’ve carried on providing the same service as you had been when the contract was in date. Employer can cut your wages, but only by negotiating the reduction with you, not by doing it arbitrarily.

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