Jury service and pay

Golden_Glow90

A friend of mine was selected for Jury Service. Their employer arranged for someone to cover the 2 weeks as they work in a job where they need to have someone cover. So they were told to claim loss of earnings from court and their employer would just top it up. However, on the first day, they were sent home saying they weren’t needed at all for the 2 weeks and that their service was effectively finished meaning they can’t claim any loss of earnings from court any more but their employer is refusing to pay them their full wage as they have already employed someone to cover so now they’re out of pocket but still required to go into work and help out. Surely this can’t be correct, surely their employer should be paying them full wage if required to go in and if they’re not going to pay the full wage, they should be letting them stay at home? I can’t seem to find anything online about what to do about pay if jury service is cancelled, just that you should return to work but if work have already paid someone to cover you, I don’t know what the right thing is

TBagpuss

I think it will depend on your friend's contract. 

If they are available and willing to work then the employer can (if they give them sufficient notice) require them to use holiday but  it's unlikely that they can simply not pay them.

If they are on a zero hours contract then obviously it is different. 

74jax

There is a section at the bottom of page 1 which asks the question - if your employee is not required to attend court can they return to work before the end of the 2 weeks. 

The employer completes this as no.  I would not be going in and working unpaid. 

General_Grant

74jax said:

There is a section at the bottom of page 1 which asks the question - if your employee is not required to attend court can they return to work before the end of the 2 weeks. 

The employer completes this as no.  I would not be going in and working unpaid. 

But the OP's friend's employer was going to top up their pay.
If the employer had ticked "no" then the choice for the employee in this case seems to be to receive just the money from the court and not go to work or go to work and get full pay (part from the court and part from the employer who was going to pay this any way).  
But the story comes to us through a number of channels so we don't really know what is proposed.

MalMonroe

Golden_Glow90 said:

A friend of mine was selected for Jury Service. Their employer arranged for someone to cover the 2 weeks as they work in a job where they need to have someone cover. So they were told to claim loss of earnings from court and their employer would just top it up. However, on the first day, they were sent home saying they weren’t needed at all for the 2 weeks and that their service was effectively finished meaning they can’t claim any loss of earnings from court any more but their employer is refusing to pay them their full wage as they have already employed someone to cover so now they’re out of pocket but still required to go into work and help out. Surely this can’t be correct, surely their employer should be paying them full wage if required to go in and if they’re not going to pay the full wage, they should be letting them stay at home? I can’t seem to find anything online about what to do about pay if jury service is cancelled, just that you should return to work but if work have already paid someone to cover you, I don’t know what the right thing is

Your friend can claim from the court because they have still lost out financially because of a decision by that court. If I were them, I would certainly make a claim, as per the link here -

https://www.gov.uk/jury-service/how-to-claim-expenses

It doesn't matter whether or not your friend served on the jury, they were told that they were needed and at the very last minute they were told they were dismissed. Obviously their employer won't want to pay two people to do the same job for two weeks and it would not be right to tell the person filling in to get lost at such short notice because they wouldn't have work for two weeks.

Therefore your friend needs to have some payment.

All they have to do is explain the situation to the court during their application. I'm sure that kind of thing happens more often than we know.

74jax

General_Grant said:

74jax said:

There is a section at the bottom of page 1 which asks the question - if your employee is not required to attend court can they return to work before the end of the 2 weeks. 

The employer completes this as no.  I would not be going in and working unpaid. 

But the OP's friend's employer was going to top up their pay.
If the employer had ticked "no" then the choice for the employee in this case seems to be to receive just the money from the court and not go to work or go to work and get full pay (part from the court and part from the employer who was going to pay this any way).  
But the story comes to us through a number of channels so we don't really know what is proposed.

Ah right I misunderstood. I thought they were still getting the 'top up' part from work, but didn't think they could claim the other (main) part, but they can by ticking the 'no' section I mentioned.  It's a bit confusing (for me anyway 😖) 

OP, so is your friend saying the company were going to top up and now aren't, or that they will not tick the 'no' box?