Advice on pay deductions

fran_l25

Hi, my partner has been working as a carer for around a year now whilst studying. This month he received an email with a letter attached stating that he had been put on a higher pay grade than he should have been, so therefore they will be deducting the extra money (roughly £1600) he was paid from his wages. 

I understand this is within the law, and we have set up a payment plan with the company, I just feel that it is completely immoral. I have very little knowledge on the subject and I was wondering if there any way at all that we could appeal this as he didn’t ask to be put on the higher pay rate, this was done automatically by management when first employed?

Thank you! 

ToxicWomble

Imagine he had been put on a lower grade and been under paid £1600
Would he want to be paid back the error ?

Mistakes happen

KatrinaWaves

Was it something he should have been reasonably aware of, like they said ‘oh your pay is 20k p/a’ but his salary payments were equiv to 24k p/a?

fran_l25

KatrinaWaves said:

Was it something he should have been reasonably aware of, like they said ‘oh your pay is 20k p/a’ but his salary payments were equiv to 24k p/a?

Basically he is Swedish and submitted certificates of his qualifications which the deputy manager told him is equivalent to an NVQ Level 3, so therefore he was entitled to slightly more money each month. And now they are saying that the qualifications are not equivalent 

KatrinaWaves

fran_l25 said:

KatrinaWaves said:

Was it something he should have been reasonably aware of, like they said ‘oh your pay is 20k p/a’ but his salary payments were equiv to 24k p/a?

Basically he is Swedish and submitted certificates of his qualifications which the deputy manager told him is equivalent to an NVQ Level 3, so therefore he was entitled to slightly more money each month. And now they are saying that the qualifications are not equivalent 

Again, is that something he would know? I wouldn't necessarily know what my quals equate to in Sweden, but i imagine if I wanted to work there Id need to find out? 

lincroft1710

fran_l25 said:

I understand this is within the law, and we have set up a payment plan with the company, I just feel that it is completely immoral.  

It is not immoral. A mistake has happened which needs to be corrected

Savvy_Sue

If he was in a union, it's possible they'd be able to help him argue for the validity / equivalence of his qualifications. 

chrisbur

fran_l25 said:

 and we have set up a payment plan with the company, 

What kind of payment plan is this.  There needs to be some plan which takes account of the fact that some of this money was deducted as tax and NI.  A deduction from gross pay would be best, though even that needs to be checked as some manual adjustment might be needed for NI.

TBagpuss

I think that he may be entitled to challenge it - if his qualifications and experience  were made clear to them and they paid him t a specific rate then I think that they might be able to argue that they have reconsidered and now wish to change the band he is on moving forward, I am not sure that they can claw it back if they offered it to him based on his qualifications. I'd suggest that he talks to ACAs or even an employment solicitor - a couple of hundred pounds for an initial meeting might be worth it to get £1,600 back,. If he knew or should have known that his qualifications were of a lower standard then it may be different, but if they knew what his skills and experience were and allocated him to one band then I think it is questionable whether they can retrospectively change that, particularly if he didn't know, and could not have reasonable known, that the banding was wrong. 

Dakta

I'm torn on this one. Mistakes do happen and with the shoe on the other foot (i.e in an underpaid scenario) I totally agree you'd want the difference.

But, based on the face of it I would love to know how standardised these pay bands are. The question someone has already raised has has to be empthasised - would the employee have any reasonable way to know the pay band was wrong? Are the bands like an industry standard or did the job add offer varios grades. Was there any reasonable way you could know that the grade was wrong?

Reason I say this is because whilst mistakes do happen  - and we need to sometimes imagine things from the employers point of view, what really is to stop any firm from saying 'look we shouldn't have valued your qualifications as much as we actually did, our apologies - in the interest of fairness do you mind backdating the difference?'

I;m not suspecting foul play, but allowing a moment to be a cynic lots of companies could be waking up to their 'mistakes' right now.

AndrewXII

I agree to the above. If it is proved to be a mistake at the time your partner started the job, unless you can demonstrate it was not a mistake, then it would be right and fair to correct it. I know someone who was told that the accounts calculated his allowance wrongly hence a deduction in his salary was made for a few months. Hence it can be confusing sometimes and mistakes happen.