Claims under s.13 ERA 1996 for sums properly payable but not paid, and what counts as wages. Delaney v Staples; Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland v Agnew.
Contract; tips; tips are not wages unless guaranteed by the employer.
1 AC 539 - Wages; deduction; a registrar refusing to do marriages (partial performance) was not entitled to pay.
Contract; variation; a unilateral pay cut is a breach; if the employee stays under protest, they can claim the shortfall.
1 AC 687 - Wages; 'wages' includes holiday pay and commission but excludes Payment in Lieu of Notice (PILON) unless contractual.
Wages; unlawful deductions; a contractual non-cash pay supplement (Truck Acts legacy) could not be unilaterally absorbed into a bonus scheme — withdrawal without contractual authority was an unauthorised deduction under the Wages Act 1986.
Wages; deduction; 'vouchers' are not wages; deductions must be from monetary wages.
Wages; deduction; a deduction is unlawful unless authorised in writing *before* the event.
Contract; discretionary bonus; irrationality/perversity standard. An employer exercising an apparently unfettered contractual bonus discretion breaches the contract if it exercises it in a way no reasonable employer would. A nil award to a senior trader whose 'individual performance' — properly construed as trading profitability — had generated substantial profits was irrational, the decision having been infected by extraneous factors such as personal dislike and his impending departure; damages were assessed as the bonus a rational employer would have awarded.
Wages; unlawful deductions; implied term; short-time working. Facing falling orders the employer unilaterally reduced working hours and pay. An express term allowing the 'working pattern' to be altered covered shift patterns only and was not a relevant provision under s.13(2) ERA 1996. The tribunal found a term implied by custom and practice permitting short-time working, but held the deductions unlawful because the employees had not been individually notified of it in writing before the deductions as s.13(2)(b) requires. The EAT went further: there was insufficient evidence of any such implied term. Past agreement by employees to vary their contracts to short-time working could not create a right for the employer to impose the change unilaterally, so absent a contractual term authorising it the reduction was an unlawful deduction. Tribunals will not lightly imply a term authorising a reduction in wages.
Unlawful deduction from wages; discretionary bonus; wages properly payable. Once an employer announces a bonus on stated terms and the employee acquires a legal entitlement to it, the bonus becomes 'wages properly payable' under s.13(3) ERA 1996. The employer cannot avoid liability by characterising the bonus as ad hoc or discretionary after the entitlement has arisen.
Contract; discretionary bonus; Wednesbury standard; UCTA s.3. The Clark v Nomura irrationality standard governs bonus discretion, but the burden on the employee is very high — he must show that no rational bank in the City would have paid so little, and the court will not substitute its own view of his worth. UCTA 1977 s.3 gave no assistance: an employee deals with his employer neither as a consumer nor on the employer's 'written standard terms of business' in respect of remuneration for his services.
Holiday pay; unlawful deductions; series of deductions. A 'series' of deductions is not automatically broken by a gap of three months or more between underpayments, nor by an intervening lawful payment: whether deductions form a series is a question of fact, and underpayments linked by a common fault — here the systematic calculation of holiday pay at basic pay rather than normal pay — can constitute a series despite such gaps. Disapproves the three-month-gap rule derived from Bear Scotland v Fulton.
Unlawful deduction from wages; discretionary bonus; crystallisation. Once the designated approver (the Sector Lead) exercised the disclosed discretion to award the full 1% kitty bonus in accordance with the terms announced to staff, the claimant's entitlement crystallised. The employer could not then move the goalposts by introducing a further approval layer or a cap that had never formed part of the scheme as communicated. EAT substituted a finding of unlawful deduction.