1. National Minimum Wage Claim

If you are paid at or near the National Minimum Wage, you can claim for breach of the National Minimum Wage Act. This avoids some of the problems of unlawful Deductions Claims, as there is no defence of consent to non-payment: you cannot agree to be paid less than the National Minimum Wage. You cannot “contract out” (that is, sign away) your rights to the NMW. Even if you signed an agreement to work for some hours without pay, or to work for less than the NMW in force at the time, the agreement is void. You can claim in full for all the hours you worked.

2. Failure to provide a written statement of terms and conditions

Your employer has to provide you with a written statement of terms and conditions of employment (essentially, your contract of employment) within 4 weeks of starting work. Not giving you a written statement is itself a separate claim to the Tribunal: another possible claim: If you win this claim, (and at least one other claim) the remedy is 2 or 4 weeks wages; a nice bonus.

3. Claim for Failure to Produce Pay Records

It can be hard to calculate whether you have been paid in full, especially when hours and rates vary. To help you check how much you should have been paid, there is a specific right in section 10 of the National Minimum Wages Act, to ”inspect, examine and copy” your pay records. If you make a written request to inspect your pay records, you have to be given access to them at your place of work (or somewhere reasonably accessible to you) within 14 days of the request; and you can take a friend with you. (An example of how to word the request is given later). If allowed to inspect, take someone with you, and your mobile phone and take photos of all the records produced to you, that relate to you. If that means 100 photos, take 100 photos. (Maybe they will let you use a photocopier!) If it takes a long time, take the time. Then you can check, later, that you have been shown all the necessary records, and can make your own calculation of what was due.

Often, however, these requests are ignored, or delayed over 14 days, or some of the information required for the calculation was missing, or the friend was not allowed in, or …. If so, you can make a separate claim to the Employment Tribunal, under section 10 and 11 NMW Act, for failure to allow inspection of pay records.

This is a very straightforward claim. You can send the letter requesting to inspect while still in employment, or after you have left it. Requesting to see your pay records is a win/win situation for you. It is a powerful weapon in 3 separate ways:

Compensation

• If the employer ignored the request, or did not actually produce the records within the 14
  days, or wouldn’t let you take copies, or …. You have a straightforweard claim for
  compensation. The Tribunal awards you 80 times the hourly NMW rate: so, at £11.44 (the
  rate after April 2024), the award is £915.20p!
• That’s £900, added to whatever wages you are owed, and just for writing a letter requesting
  to see the records. Send the request now!

Collecting the Evidence

• But you also gain if the employer allows the request and lets you see and copy the records.
  You can identify much more clearly how much you have been paid, and what is still owed to
  you. You have much better evidence to show the Tribunal.

Persuading the Tribunal

• You also strengthen your claim to the Tribunal even where you are denied access to the
  records. You cannot calculate the claim precisely without access to the records, and so the
  Tribunal are likely to allow you to proceed with just your estimate of what you are owed;
  and will itself Order the employer to produce the records as part of the claim.
• If the employer does not comply with the Tribunal’s Order to produce the records, (and
  many employers can’t – they don’t keep proper records), the Tribunal is likely to award you
  the full amount of your estimate, since the employer cannot prove less is due!

4. Holiday Pay: Working Time Regulations

• Claims for holiday pay are the other major area where workers are often cheated out of the
  full amount due. Some employers ignore paid holidays completely; or make it difficult or
  impossible for workers to take their holidays. The rules and calculations can be complex, but
  complete failure to pay is straightforward.
• Under a law called The Working Time Regulations, workers are entitled to a minimum of 28
  days paid holiday a year (5.6 weeks, including Bank Holidays), accrued from the start of their
  employment. If they have worked less than a year, they are due a proportion. So if you
  have finished work after 3 months, and have had no paid holidays, you are due a quarter of
  28 days, 7 days pay. If holidays have not been taken during employment, then they can be
  claimed as back pay when you leave: up to two years entitlement. But the normal time limit
  for making claims applies: 3 months from the last day of employment.
• If you had some paid holidays while in work, but not the full amount due, then you cannot
  carry over the rest of the entitlement into the next year, and risk losing it if you do not claim
  at the end of that year.

Claims for Holiday Pay can be taken as claims for either:

• Breach of Working Time Regulations, or
• Breach of Contract, (but see the Warning below!) or
• Deduction of Wages: Holiday Pay counts as Wages.