Not been paid

[Mrs Cuchillo]

I work for the NHS, payday is the 24th of the month which fell on Saturday.

Usually, we are paid the preceding Friday when payday falls over the weekend.

I was not paid but colleagues have been.

What are my rights if I am not paid when I was expecting to be? Is being paid before the weekend just a goodwill gesture or a legal requirement.

If I incur any costs as a result of their mistake, can I ask them to compensate?

Although not in my case, it could affect credit ratings.

[Vipers]

Find out first what went wrong, why wasn't you paid on time, a few days either way is no big deal assuming you get paid in the next few days.

[Mrs Cuchillo]

Not really, my D/Ds all go out between now and the end of the month, which would send me overdrawn (within limit) unless I move money around.

FFS all the payroll dept have to do is remember to pay people and they can't even get that right!

[grumbledoak]

Your D/Ds won't be processed over the weekend either...

[530dTPhil]

Don't assume that the payroll department has made an error. It could be the NHS bankers or your bank or building society that has caused the delay. If we have a delay with any of our employees receiving their salaries later than intended, it is usually the ones that use a building society for their current account. The delay is normally only one working day.

[Mrs Cuchillo]

Hmm. I'm with Alliance & Leicester. Which are they these days?

[grumbledoak]

Still five days clearing, surely? I think they are a clearing bank these days, but I don't think they guarantee three days yet. Moves are afoot for much faster clearing, but it's slow going.

I'd just check again on Monday...

[Mrs Cuchillo]

Err...no offence, but I didn't ask for advice on how to manage my finances. As I said I can move some money around temporarily, but this particular account is the one that my salary goes into.

My question was over an employer's obligation to pay on a certain day. It was as much as anything a hypothetical question. Can anyone answer the original question?

[ymwoods]

pretty much as long as the employer meant to pay you then its fair play as they just made a mistake. The only thing that would be an issue is if you had to pay overdraft fees or you lost a service because of that mistake. Then they must re-pay you for any charges connected to that mistake. You will need to provide them with evidence of the charge and convince them that you had no other means of which to stop the charge/loss of service.

(on the issue of charges) It is also your responsibility to try as best as you can to not get charges. If you have 10k in a savings account and don't move it to cover a £10 bill and then get a £25 charge. It would be seen as your fault if it was to ever go to a claims court (if it got that far and they were still refusing to pay)

[Mrs Cuchillo]

Hmm...that all seems a bit open to abuse - a bit like "the cheque's in the post". Whilst I'm sure the NHS is not guilty of this, there must be loads of employers who pay people late by making a "mistake".

I'm sure I'm not the only person who was under the mistaken impression that when you are told that you will be paid on the 24th, the employer is obliged to transfer the money in time. I've been working for nearly 20 years now, and this is the first time that this has happened!

Oh well, live and learn.

[siscar]

If your contract says that you will be paid on the 24th then they are in breach of that contract if you are not paid. But defining 'paid' can be hard, if they have made payment but you have yet to receive it then you have been 'paid'. If there is a mistake what most reasonable employers would do is to pay any costs incurred because of it, so long as they are reasonable and unavoidable.

[Mrs Cuchillo]

Well it turns out that it was the payroll depts fault - after various trust mergers over the last few years they decided this month to change us all over onto one system, and somehow this picked up an old bank account which has been dead for nearly 2 years, and have paid my salary into that!

Then they wanted me to sign an indemnity form in case the bank did not send some or all of the money back to them, to say that I would undertake to repay any shortfall!

I very politely refused, so the person I spoke to has found a way around it, and I will be paid today.

[Engineer1]

Glad to hear it is worked out, i'd ask them to cover any costs of not being paid on time, it is unreasonable to expect an employee to be out of pocket because a company cocked up the pay. My wife has had similar happen when NHS trusts merged meaning late payment and in the current financial environment that can fk your finances badly.