Started on 1st working day of the month, but not paid fully?

duchy

If your contract/offer of employment shows a start date of the 3rd-that's the day you are paid from-seems simple to me.

SandC

I think you need to ask yourself if the 1st had fallen on the Friday and you started on the Monday 4th would you consider you should be paid for the 2nd/3rd?

Incisor

ceridwen wrote: »

... I agree with you. The firm is trying it on. Unfortunately - I suspect they may be able to get away with doing you out of 2/31 of that months pay - just because the 1st was a Saturday.

I can only speak for what I would do in your position. I would check it out officially - ie I guess the ACAS website might be helpful. Your trade union should know as well (errr...you are in a union I guess? If not - then join one pronto - this is probably the "flavour" of how this firm is going to be - they will probably have other little try-ons they use - I dont expect this will be the only one you come across).

I agree with what you say about the company trying it on, but I disagree with how to address it.

I would suggest the OP get the ruling recorded in writing [writing their own letter if necessary] and then just apply the 'Sauce for goose == sauce for gander' rule. As someone suggested, this works to advantage for unpaid leave. Also, when leaving the company, the OP should take care to leave on a Monday, to get 3 extra days pay for 1 extra day of work. If there is leave to be taken when leaving the company, this should be booked and taken to give a Monday as the final day of attendance in order to ensure that 5 days leave generates a week's pay.

big_mortgage

SandC wrote: »

I think you need to ask yourself if the 1st had fallen on the Friday and you started on the Monday 4th would you consider you should be paid for the 2nd/3rd?

No clearly not. But I dont expect for weekends to be considered, they are not working days. Still thanks everyone. As I said, I have started on Mon 3rd before and had no probs.

I will make sure my leaving date is a weekend.

alison999

big_mortgage wrote: »

No clearly not. But I dont expect for weekends to be considered, they are not working days. Still thanks everyone. As I said, I have started on Mon 3rd before and had no probs.

I will make sure my leaving date is a weekend.

maybe youre in the wrong job if your already thinking of leaving?

ceridwen

Should think that will do the trick to get back the 2 days money owed you - by leaving on a Sunday. Me - I'd be thinking around whats what on leaving a couple of days into the next paymonth too (at a suitable day of the week) to be sure and certain you get your money back. Annoying to have to give your employer an interest-free loan of some of your money against your will!

Maybe that employer doesnt normally follow that tactic - could be worth asking longer-serving employees if they do. One thing I have noticed going on these days is for employers to force their staff to give them "an interest-free loan" of a bit of their salary - i.e. delaying paying them salary, delaying paying them their expenses, giving them just the basic "time" rate for overtime and saying they will pay the balance later, etc - so it may be that your employer is just researching ways to get loans from their staff and this is one they have found - but that they havent done this to staff previously - in which case you could maybe quote "custom and practice" to get your money owed now.

Snuggles

OP, if you are going to pursue this then good luck, but I honestly don't believe your employer has done anything untoward.

I am due to begin a new job on Monday 5th January, and I know I will only be paid from the 5th, ie I will "lose" 4 days pay, even though I will only have missed one working day of the month (Friday 2nd). It's just the way these things are worked out when you are on salaried pay.

If the number of working days were taken into account, you would be paid a different amount every month.

malc_b

Well the company I used to work for did not do it this way. They used 21.75 working days per month AFAIR. So if you missed a working day (M-F) you lost 1/21.75 of the month's salary. And a month was 1/12 of year's salary.

In hindsight (and in future) I'd ask how they work things out as if you had started on the Friday you would have had 3 days pay for 1 days work. But I'd agree it is daft. Just because it is the normal way of doing things does not make it correct.

SandC

It will actually be a paperwork thing. The wages office have been given a form that says OP will be starting on 3rd November. They are paying him from 3rd November. The manager/boss asks the wages office 'is this right?' after OP questions it and they say 'yes, he started on 3rd November'. I doubt the wages office even registered the 1st being a weekend and therefore went by the book and the manager/boss is just reporting what they have said to him.

Had it been thought about in advance the manager could have passed on the info to the wages office stating a start date of 1st November and they would have paid that accordingly.

It's just down to bad luck that nobody spotted it or thought anything of it.

elle_gee

It would work the same where I work (in a HR Dept). You are paid a salary, not a wage, which therefore takes into account weekends as well as working week days. You are paid in twelve equal instalments for working whole months, however if you then don't work part of a month (be it at the beginning or the end of your employment) then the monthly instalment is again divided by the number of days in the month and the appropriate number of days taken off that month's salary instalment, in your case two days.

Can't say we've ever had any queries with our system in the nearly three years I've been there.. it's just taken as standard. (Manufacturing industry, if it maakes any odds).