Late/deferred payment of wages - any recourse?

[Mario149]

A friend of mine is a temp (although has been there for a few years) at a small business doing reception type work. She gets paid by the hour (she works part time doing shifts a few times a week) and her pay normally arrives on the last working day of the month.

However, on Friday when her pay was due, she was only paid £500 for December rather than the full amount with the rest "to follow due to a busy banking schedule". I wouldn't normally be worried as it could just be a one-off, but the company co-owner/director who handles this is, how can I put it politely, a complete incompetent 'tard....and that's being generous. Also, she's been messed about before in other areas working for them and it's starting to piss me off because she shouldn't have to deal with that stuff. Unfortunately, she's the sort of person who'd rather not rock the boat and gives people a lot of leeway when they don't deserve it.

So, I'm trying to find out if she has any statutory (rather than contractual to keep it simple) recourse? I was self employed for a few years and used the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act several times when companies I was working for messed me about, but I'm a bit uneducated with regards to her situation. Even if there is something similar for the LPOCDA for her, it'll only make her a few extra quid, but it's more the point of it that she can draw a line in the sand with her employer as they seem to think they can get away with this and other things like it quite a lot.

Any help much appreciated

[Cyberprog]

It's a breach of contract firstly, but it may also be illegal if the payment was less than minimum wage for the hours worked.
At time of writing, this is £6.08 for over 21's, and I'm using this as the basis of the maths:
£500/£6.08 = 82.23hrs (roughly). Assuming she works a 40-hour week, that would be a little over 2 weeks work, so may well be illegal for them to have paid her that little.

[TurricanII]

Off topic but I am sure I read something on the government website along the lines that temp employees gained the rights of permanent employees if they were kept on for over a certain period.

This may have no bearing now, but your temp friend may have accrued equivalent permie rights to a notice period, redundancy/dismissal procedure..

[Mario149]

TurricanII said:

Off topic but I am sure I read something on the government website along the lines that temp employees gained the rights of permanent employees if they were kept on for over a certain period.

This may have no bearing now, but your temp friend may have accrued equivalent permie rights to a notice period, redundancy/dismissal procedure..

I don't suppose you have any links for this? The Direct Gov website is proving about as useful as tits on a fish The info is probably there but just buried 18 pages in

[GeraldSmith]

Mario149 said:

I don't suppose you have any links for this? The Direct Gov website is proving about as useful as tits on a fish The info is probably there but just buried 18 pages in

Try this

[rolando]

Mario149 said:

I don't suppose you have any links for this? The Direct Gov website is proving about as useful as tits on a fish The info is probably there but just buried 18 pages in

Hope this helps

[Mario149]

Many thanks for all this people, I'm passing it on to her now as well as a kick in the backside to make use of it!

[TurricanII]

I am probably giving duff info.

I was thinking of FIXED TERM workers which is not the same as temp:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Understandi...

This case suggests that you do NOT accrue rights over time as a temp:

http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/03/17/...

This may actually be relevant:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Understandi...