Agency not paying wages & expenses due to hiring company not paying?

AnnaBanna

Hi all,

I do have an account here but would prefer this to remain as anonymous as possible, due to there being some fairly identifying details on my other account, and the possibility of legal action further down the line, hence the new account.

Anyway, I was recently sent on a job by my employment agency. Due to a !!!! up somewhere along the line (whether this was the fault of the agency or the hiring company, I am not entirely sure) I incurred expenses which were authorised in advance by the company, as well as a noticeable sum of money spent on phone calls. We were assured at the time that we would be given a full day's pay and we would be reimbursed for "reasonable expenses" in full, as well as being paid for a full days work.

However, I have now been told that I will be paid late, due to the hiring company not returning the timesheets on time. It is unclear as to whether they have, or have not, as yet, been returned by the company :eek:

Anyway, if I am not paid within a reasonable period of time (what would be counted as a reasonable period of time?) - either for hours worked / spent following their instructions, or for expenses (I have submitted proof, and I have my own originals of the proof submitted), then where do I stand legally? I suspect that the reason given for any further delays / non-payment will be that the hiring company has not paid / submitted relevant documents. But is this a legally valid reason, given that I do not have a contractual relationship with the hiring company?

Ultimately, I need this money if I am to pay the bills. Although in the short term family can bail me out, not being paid will cause significant financial & practical problems. If worst comes to the worst, would the best way forward be via an employment tribunal (although direct.gov.uk tells me that I am not an employee but a 'worker') or via the small claims court? And is there a difference between wages and expenses, as far as the law goes?

Thanks all

marybelle01

It is relatively normal for your contract with the agency to contain a clause in the small print that they only pay you upon receipt of validated timesheets / confirmation from the client. Otherwise they have no evidence that you actually turned up for work! In my experience is is rare for such confirmation to be late, but it does happen - it happened to me once because the person doing the sign off was on holiday and they had forgotten to teach anyone else how to do it! It generally gets sorted out pretty quickly by the agency chasing the client. It usually - again in my experience - only needs the timesheets, as billing the client is usually done on different cycles, and isn't related to paying you.

Chase up the agency and see what is happening - it is far too early to be thinking of legal action. When mine was late it was only by a week, and was in the next pay.

AnnaBanna

Sorry; I should have said that there other things that have been said that make me nervous about this - this doesn't include the fine details; rather what is relevant legally.

Of course it is too early to be thinking about legal action - but I need to know what the worst case scenario is. Unfortunately my financial buffer is currently non-existent - I am close to my overdraft limit, and I have rent going out soon. If I am not paid for this in a timely manner or not will mean the difference between getting into rent arrears and not. This is why I am so nervous - to be able to borrow off family in the short term I need the reassurance that, come hell or high water, I will get the money back by one means or another.

paddyrg

Worst-case scenario is that you sue the agency for hours you have worked and expenses, let them worry about suing their client. Keep copies of all timesheets etc and make sure you have followed all the procedures to the letter.

For it to come to that, though, is unlikely. Can you at least name the agency so we can have a dig through whatever terms they put on their website? Some agencies, for instance, will factor every invoice (meaning the staff get paid no matter what)

Notmyrealname

marybelle01 wrote: »

It is relatively normal for your contract with the agency to contain a clause in the small print that they only pay you upon receipt of validated timesheets / confirmation from the client.

I've done agency work for well over a decade for several agencies and have never ever heard of that. The only time you didn't get paid on time is if YOU didn't send in your timesheet by Monday morning.

patman99

I've had it happen to me. I put my timesheet in on tine for the one days work I did, but the manager who signed it wasn't authorised to do so. It took 6 weeks to get paid.

Btw, almost every Agency will accept an emailed copy of the signed timesheet these days. At my current Agency job I haven't sent a paper copy of a timesheet in in over 13 months. The hirer gathers them all up to process them and faxes the lot to the Agency.
As long as they have a signature on it they are happy.

InsideInsurance

It is very normal for an agency not to pay until they get the signed off timesheet, as others have said, the agency has no idea what hours you've done without it.

If the process has broken because the guys from where your working havent signed off and returned it etc then you need to be chasing the right people and make sure it goes back etc

I'd love to know which agencies pay out without signed off timesheets that a few here say they've worked for.