part time job

squizz11

my friend and I worked for an after school club just walking children from one school to another to go to an after school club. we were walking up anyway so it was a bit of pocket money.
I only did it for approx 6 months but my friend was doing it for approx three and half years and we were only paid 3.50 per day to do it,
we bought up some concerns about safety and the lady who runs it didnt agree but said she would assess it and could we take a couple of weeks off while she did this
roll on 12 weeks later and after many texts saying she would come and talk to us she sent us both a letter saying we were no longer required.

i know its a crap amount of money but my friend found it useful and she is a bit upset as she enjoyed walking the kids up

my question is even though no contracts were signed and it was cash in hand can she legally do that

thanks

Undervalued

With less than two years employment she can terminate your employment without any reason simply by giving you one week's notice.

However it sounds as though you were being paid less than the national minimum wage.

So, you may have a claim against her for the both the notice pay and the shortfall in wages. Whether is is worth pursuing is another matter.

Also, with young children involved did the employer satisfy all of the safeguarding requirements?

Savvy_Sue

Undervalued wrote: »

However it sounds as though you were being paid less than the national minimum wage.

Not if it only took half an hour to walk up there: and I wouldn't have thought a longer walk than that was likely.

annandale

You didn't have a contract and she was paying you cash in hand. I'd be surprised if there was much you could do about this.

Leo2020

Undervalued wrote: »

With less than two years employment she can terminate your employment without any reason simply by giving you one week's notice.

However it sounds as though you were being paid less than the national minimum wage.

So, you may have a claim against her for the both the notice pay and the shortfall in wages. Whether is is worth pursuing is another matter.

Also, with young children involved did the employer satisfy all of the safeguarding requirements?

The OP is also wondering whether her friend, who worked for 3 1/2 years, can claim anything.

annandale

You could involve HMRC although that might also mean that you are asked whether or not you declared the income. (not assuming that you didn't)

squizz11

it took about 20 mins to do , so yes min wage was paid. she has treated us pretty shodily to be fair and when we first brought up our concerns about safety, she said she had to think about her profits (putting money before childrens safety ) she did what the guidelines told her to do, but some of the children are barely 4 years old so we felt the ratios should be higher.

she originally told us to take a break while she sorted it and told the people who stood in it was only temp. so we were given no notice just a letter in the post effective immediately.

just wondering the legalities of it as it says on CAB that a contract is still there even if nothing signed.

Savvy_Sue

I doubt there's anything you can do because you hadn't been employed very long. Your friend possibly has a case for unfair dismissal, but as there is now a charge for taking cases to employment tribunals it's unlikely to be worth doing.

You could report your concerns re: safety to Ofsted, but if she was indeed following the guidelines then unlikely to be worthwhile.

If there was a management committee then talking to them would possibly have been worthwhile, but if it's being run by an individual I guess there's nothing like that.

squizz11

the individual running it is the commitee unfortunately. its not even about getting the job back or money, its more of the principle of how she has treated us and letting her know she cant do that.

Savvy_Sue

squizz11 wrote: »

the individual running it is the commitee unfortunately. its not even about getting the job back or money, its more of the principle of how she has treated us and letting her know she cant do that.

the trouble is, she shouldn't do that, but there are very few (if any) effective remedies if she does treat people like that.

I'm going to declare an interest here: in my time I have helped to run two afterschool clubs, and in one of them we did need to walk children from one school to another. It was one of the most terrifying parts of the planning: getting people prepared to do it, making sure they and the school office knew who was to be collected, ensuring there were adequate staff at the club for those who weren't being walked there, ensuring there were enough walking staff if more children than usual were coming from the 'other' school - and that's before you set out with a little crocodile! I often ended up doing the walking as a volunteer simply to get the job done - my own children would go into the club from their school while I walked up to the other school, and we'd then go home!

Margins were always very tight, so it's never quite as simple as prioritising money over child safety: sometimes it was a question of keeping the club open at all!

One suggestion for the future: if there's a problem in a job, see if you can present a solution at the same time. I don't know how you came across, and I don't know how serious the issues were, but the owner must have felt she wasn't going to get to a satisfactory resolution.

Ozzuk

You could try a MCOL for the missing notice payment, that is probably as much as you'll get. I think it costs around £1200 to bring an ET action (for your friend) so I doubt she'll want to pursue that.