Legal rights to rate of pay specified in offer letter?

andbeck

Thanks all for your comments. I’ll advise my son to contact ACAS but suspect he will just have to accept that he will be paid £7 per hour until he is 18 (despite what the offer letter said) as he won’t want to rock the boat too much and risk losing his job. 

General_Grant

andbeck said:

My son took a job last November and was formally offered an hourly rate of £9.18 in his offer letter - he and his employer then signed a contract of employment, which states that his contractual rate of pay is specified in the offer letter. 

After some bumpy months where he was paying emergency tax (and then had it refunded when his tax code was sorted) he’s now discovered that he’s only been paid £7 per hour since he started. 

Upon querying with his manager they advised that there was a mistake in his contract/offer letter and the correct rate of pay is £7 for under 18s (he’s 17). The manager advised last weekend that they would take the matter up with payroll but he’s heard nothing since.

Where does my son stand in terms of his legal rights to receive the £9.18 per hour specified in his offer letter? Can they just print a new contract, make him sign it, and refuse to pay the difference? 

Did he not receive payslips for at least a couple of months showing that he was paid just £7 an hour?  Tax deductions wouldn't alter the gross pay.   So, is Payroll doing its job properly and providing payslips at or before the time payment is made?

ReadingTim

Sounds like a mistake by HR - they used the adult template offer letter, rather than the one for under 18s.  Errors happen.  What was the rate the job was advertised at?  

Anyway, why's it taken 4 months to notice?  I appreciate the reality of only focusing on the net pay number, as that's the amount you actually get in your pocket, but the hourly rate should be pretty obvious on the gross amount of the payslip, before deductions for tax etc: x hours at y rate equals z pounds.  Why didn't he notice that y was 7.00 rather than 9.18?  

Savvy_Sue

Marvel1 said:

Considering they can get rid for under 2 years service, I wouldnt waste paying for a union.

Not for this specific issue, possibly, but he won't always be less than 2 years service, and the time to join is before you need them ... 

And there are other benefits. 

andbeck

Thanks all for your replies - after a bit of back and forth the company have conceded that he should be paid £9.18 per hour, as stated in his offer letter, and they will correct his pay in his next wage packet. 

Really grateful for all the valuable advice on here (in particular, the contact details for ACAS) as without it I don’t think we would have had the knowledge or confidence to challenge - thank you once again!

TELLIT01

That's good news, but your son may have to accept that he won't get any payrises until the minimum wage for his age group catches up with what he is now being paid.