Employer can't pay wages but won't make redundant - help please!

hells_belles

My husband works for a small architecture firm which are struggling. For the last 2 and a half years he's had a 15% reduction on his salary.
In May they were late paying his salary which he eventually received in installments over a few weeks. This has then happened every month since.
He has currently only been paid 30% of his salary for August & is still waiting for the rest to be paid. On Thursday his September salary will be due to be paid though.
He has raised the issue with his boss today & was told he should get paid 40% of his August salary this week & should get the rest, along with his September salary by the end of October!
They won't make him redundant as they keep saying that things are picking up although I suspect it's more likely that they can't afford to make him redundant as he's worked there 13 years.
He has an income protection policy but obviously can't claim as he's still in employment. We're having to borrow money from relatives to pay the bills as we have no savings. I'm currently on maternity leave & with 3 kids to take care of, we were struggling financially anyway.
If they would just make him redundant we could at least claim off the insurance & he'd have more time to dedicate to finding another job......it's just so frustrating! We don't know what to do now so any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated

LL30

I feel your pain! A similar thing happened to me last year (I was also on mat leave) and it left me in such a mess! I stupidly decided to go back after mat leave, only to be made redundant within a couple of months (and get royally stuffed with redundancy pay - they had no money, what else was I expecting?!) I think what your husband needs to do is sit down with his Boss and discuss what's going on openly. He could go down the route of raising a grievance but it depends what he wants the outcome to be. Grievances are rough, and ETs even worse, I've found it much better just to walk away this time, my sanity is far more important than chasing money that's not going appear for a long time. Could he negotiate leaving? Or are you reliant on him being made redundant to get the insurance?

SarEl

I agree. The problem here is that he cannot force them to make him redundant, and whilst he can take legal action about the failure to pay wages, it would take longer for the action to take place than it is actually taking for his wages to be paid. So it isn't a very practicable way of handling things. Technically he might leave and claim breach of contract/ unfair dismissal, but that would leave him also without the redundancy pay and I doubt the insurance would pay up if he did so. And it would be a very risky strategy which he in all probability would not win at tribunal.