Flexi Furlough: Wage vs Claim

Weemantam · 23 March 2021 at 12:30PM

I am on the verge of entering into a dispute with my employer regarding my flexi-furlough wage but could do with someone knowledgable telling me whether it's me (probably) or my employer who are in the wrong. I'm reasonably well paid for quite a technical job, let say £5k per month gross for easy workings, so when I was put on Flexi I was asked to work 3 day weeks. SO, I expected my wage would be 3 days at £1000 and 2 days at £800 totalling £4600. Happy days. Then I get my wage slip through and I only have £4000. Now, two things, 4k is still a lot of money and I am all in favour of furlough to save jobs - I was fully furloughed on 80% of the £2500 cap for several months last year.

The disparity appears to be that my employer puts in the cap of £2500 on my whole months pay then bases the 2 days furlough at a baseline pay of £2500 rather than £5000. Essentially, my complaint is that they are paying me the amount fo money they can claim back from HMRC due to my flexi-furlough status rather than the amount that is written pretty much everywhere, including on HMRC's website - which is a straight up 80% of wages. My understanding is that the £2500 cap only applies to the 8days pay I am furloughed each month which, on a monthly wage of £5k and 8 furlough days in 20 working days (keeping it simple) would only total £2k and so would not apply. Sadly the only examples out there illustrate the CLAIM calculation relating to what my employer can get from HMRC and there are ZERO examples of how much I should get in the top line of my wage slip.

Apologies for the deluge of numbers but I need someone to understand what I am saying if, for no other reason than to show I am wrong or to to be the basis for someone else looking for the same clarification. There is NOTHING out there which calculates an actual in-the-pocket wage of a flexi-furlough employee and loads of examples of how much an employer can claim from HMRC. Thanks for your time in reading this, now, go get some asprin

sheramber · 23 March 2021 at 12:49PM

Have read of this which says a cap of £2500 for the hours not worked.

https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/emp-law/employees/furlough#gref

Weemantam · 23 March 2021 at 12:57PM

sheramber said:

Have read of this which says a cap of £2500 for the hours not worked.

My example shows that a person earning £5k who normally works 20 days a month would be earning £250 per day so if they were furloughed for 8 of those days then the pay for those days not worked is £2000. If your article is correct then this falls below the threshold of £2500 and should not be applied anywhere in the wage calculation. Crucially, though, my company appears to be doing exactly that.

Thanks for the link.