Employer won't pay wages

mr_boony

I went to go and work on a market stall on a self employed basis which was supposed tone for the whole summer...

The agreement which was just a verbal one was that it would be £80/day for 10 hours work. I did 69 hours over 6 days! And he said I would not be paid for the additional hours. Not only this but the agreement was to also include all food as we were staying away from home which he did supply breakfast and dinner but no lunch and I ended up having to buy my own which at events is VERY expensive! Not only did I have to buy my lunch but we weren't allowed a lunch break we had to wolf down a sandwich ASAP whilst doing other things and get back on the stand, we had to plead to be able to go to the toilet!

I had enough after 6 days and walked out. I have emails as of here with him saying he's not paying the extra hours and that he will be deducting the cost of flights etc to get staff in to cover me. I also haven't been paid the £80/day yet either. He then starte slandering me saying that he can see why I had to close my business down because I can't commit, that I didn't run it the way he would or that I should etc...

What can I do I just want my money I worked long hours doing hard physical work with no breaks and barely any sleep as he had friends into the caravan till early hours of the morning so staff had to stay up.

I'm sure he's broken the law as to working times, break etc.

paddedjohn

If you were at his beck and call and couldn't choose what hours you wanted to work then you weren't self employed.

maninthestreet

Cost of flights???

samkma

Get in touch with you local CAB office.

Takeaway_Addict

paddedjohn wrote: »

If you were at his beck and call and couldn't choose what hours you wanted to work then you weren't self employed.

Not necessarily true, you can be self employed and asked to work certain times for certian periods of the year.

OP if you are truly self employed then you could have stopped after 10 hours and the boss is your client so no rules have been broken.

Proving you're not self employed is the difficult part with so little time worked.

kingfisherblue

mr_boony wrote: »

I went to go and work on a market stall on a self employed basis which was supposed tone for the whole summer...

The agreement which was just a verbal one was that it would be £80/day for 10 hours work. I did 69 hours over 6 days! And he said I would not be paid for the additional hours. Not only this but the agreement was to also include all food as we were staying away from home which he did supply breakfast and dinner but no lunch and I ended up having to buy my own which at events is VERY expensive! Not only did I have to buy my lunch but we weren't allowed a lunch break we had to wolf down a sandwich ASAP whilst doing other things and get back on the stand, we had to plead to be able to go to the toilet!

I had enough after 6 days and walked out. I have emails as of here with him saying he's not paying the extra hours and that he will be deducting the cost of flights etc to get staff in to cover me. I also haven't been paid the £80/day yet either. He then starte slandering me saying that he can see why I had to close my business down because I can't commit, that I didn't run it the way he would or that I should etc...

What can I do I just want my money I worked long hours doing hard physical work with no breaks and barely any sleep as he had friends into the caravan till early hours of the morning so staff had to stay up.

I'm sure he's broken the law as to working times, break etc.

Where did you fly to/from? Was it within the UK? If not, presumably the laws would be those of whichever country you were in.

saintjammyswine

If you were self employed surely you should be submitting an invoice for work done as per the agreement and the 'employer' should pay this. If not then shouldn't you be able to go to small claims court for non payment of an invoice? Harder to prove without a written agreement though.

pinkshoes

I'm not sure about the self employed thing.

It sounds to me like you had a contract for the entire summer, being paid £80 a day.

By leaving just 6 days in, then assuming you would have had to give 1 weeks notice, then they can quite rightfully charge for having to replace you for the days you should have been there.

They cannot deduct any costs for AFTER the notice period date.