Mrs J O Vykhrystiuk v Evri Ltd: 6003792/2024
JUDGMENT
[1]The claimant’s complaint of failure to pay outstanding holiday pay on termination of employment fails. The claimant’s claim for notice pay fails.[3]The claimant’s claim for unauthorised deduction from wages succeeds in part and the respondent is ordered to pay to the claimant £755.84 Short form reasons[1]The claimant’s complaint of failure to pay outstanding holiday pay on termination of employment fails. I heard oral evidence from the claimant and scrutinised the 153 page bundle of documents that she had contributed to to seek to support as a litigant in person in substantiating her claim. The claimant was unable to establish that she was due leave beyond the 3.9 days leave that were credited to her in her final payslip in the sum of £375.09 and £94.92 by the respondent.[2]The claimant’s claim for notice pay fails. The claimant accepted in oral evidence that she had had a period of unauthorised absence from 29 February 2024 and that she did not communicate with the respondent further until after, having given notice of the disciplinary hearing, it dismissed her in her absence for gross misconduct after hearing on 20 March 2024. Further, the claimant said that she had attempted to resign on 1 March 2024. She is not entitled to the one-week notice pay that she claimed.[3]The claimant’s claim for unauthorised deduction from wages was put in two parts. The first part of her complaint was that she had had historic underpayment. She said that she had added up all the hours she had ever worked for the employer and worked them out at a rate of pay of £11.81 per hour and then deducted from that all the wages she’d ever received from the employer and that she had a shortfall. Although I was unable to scrutinise her calculations because she had not provided them to the tribunal she told me that they included over time and times when although the respondent had recorded her as on unpaid leave or off sick, she says she worked. She was unable to provide those dates and details of those occasions today. It was not in the interests of justice to adjourn this hearing for further information to be provided no application for postponement was made by either party.[4]I took the claimant back through payslips for the last four months of her employment and she gave oral evidence that the hours credited on those payslips accurately reflected the hours that she had worked on the correct rates of pay. Accordingly, she was unable to establish that she had been underpaid and, if there had been underpayments prior to that date, then any series of underpayments would have been broken by those last four months which were paid correctly and time would have expired.[5]The second part of her unauthorised deductions complaint was that on termination of employment her payslip wrongly deducted from her pay for the period of unauthorised absence twice. I find as a fact that she did no work for the respondent in March 2024. She was credited in the final payslip with having worked in that month and then a deduction was made in accordance with the clause 16.1 of her contract of employment entitling the respondent to make deductions from salary where there has been unauthorised absence. That deduction was made, in error, twice. I’m grateful to the respondent’s counsel for taking us all carefully through the payslips. I supported the claimant as a litigant in person to allow the unauthorised deduction complaint in respect of the double deduction despite the claimant not having expressly pleaded her position that way. I accept her submission that she had not been able to see the payslips until recently and had not fully understood how to read them. The second part of the claim for unauthorised deduction from wages succeeds.[6]The respondent is ordered to pay to the claimant £ 755.84, compensation for the unauthorised deduction ordered gross in accordance with guidance in the employment tribunal remedies handbook. I understand that respondent had already arranged to make a payment of £577 being that amount net of deduction. It will now need to make arrangements to top up its payment to the claimant to the full gross amount ordered.