Pay dispute - help needed!

killiegirl_2

Hi, I'm really hoping someone can give me some advice.
Last December I received an email saying the following from my line manager;

This e-mail is to confirm that you will receive a 2.5% pay increase wef 1 Feb ’12.
Please let me know if you wish to discuss.
Regards

This promised pay rise has never materialised. I have chased it time and time again through both my manager and my HR manager. My HR manager has been claiming to be 'looking into it' for months now. I've also raised it through our official HR system online but the case keeps being referred back to my HR manager who has been worse than useless!

The company I work for is one of the world's largest, and putting through a standard payrise should not be a problem. No one has at any stage disputed that I am due this increase.

It's getting quite urgent that I get it sorted as I am due to start maternity leave in July, with 3 weeks' annual leave to take before it, so I am only in the office for 3 more weeks. My maternity pay (for the first 6 weeks before it switches to SMP anyway) will obviously also be affected by this. I don't see any way it will be resolved once I'm not physically there to keep pushing it. I should be due a substantial amount in arrears now if it's backdated to February.

Do I have a case to take this further, outwith the company? I don't want to start threatening legal action as I would like to go back after my maternity leave!

Any help on this would be very much appreciated!

marybelle01

well the only way to chase this outside the company is to start legal action, and since you don't want to do that, I don't know what else anyone can suggest. Have you tried a formal grievance?

Wellery82

My guess is your manager has promised something they are not authorised to do and as such people are chasing around now for it to be sanctioned from very senior people who are not prioritising this. Obviously that may be way off the mark

The key thing is you do not drop it. Review your companies grievance policy and write a formal letter in asking for this to be treated as a stage 2 grievance (ie formal) given it has not been resolved through a more informal manner.

Given you have this in writing, and the fact this is a large organisation, i don't see how they cannot honour it really as they run the risk of possible constructive dismissal claims and reputational damage internally (ie don't trust the company!!). That said i would guess given you have not signed it they potentially have a way they can argue their corner if they really wanted to.

Make sure you follow the grievance procedure all the way through and make sure you settle for nothing less than the rise, backdated to the agreed date. If needs be make noises about constructive dismissal also i would advise, but though with greater legal knowledge would be better placed to ask

Good luck

coinxoperated

I would personally suggest writing a letter to the HR department to say whats happened.

patman99

Do make sure any letter you send is via Recorded Delivery. At least that way they cannot claim they did not receive it.

Believe me, persistence pays-off. I spent the last three weeks locked in an argument about not being paid for May B/H. when they realized I was not going to let it drop, they looked again and realized they had cocked-up and paid me.

killiegirl_2

Thanks everyone. It's just very frustrating as everything seems to get referred back to my local HR manager, who is very nice but I have a feeling he thinks if he stalls til I go off on mat leave then the problem will go away! There's no way I'm just leaving it though! I guess it'll need to be a formal letter and see how that goes down.

getmore4less

killiegirl wrote: »

Thanks everyone. It's just very frustrating as everything seems to get referred back to my local HR manager, who is very nice but I have a feeling he thinks if he stalls til I go off on mat leave then the problem will go away! There's no way I'm just leaving it though! I guess it'll need to be a formal letter and see how that goes down.

Go and park yourself in his office,

dealing with this is "work" , tell your manager you have a meeting with HR to resolve the issue so may be a while.........