Contents
All change for pensions
A waste of time & money
Tax credit mess
Fuel up (shock)
Gimme shelter
Gulp! SIPPS
Paper or plastic?
Re: Mortgages
Bank the cheque
Subs beware
VAT's the limit
Dividend end?
The buck stops
Sack with care
Selling up
A matter of trust
We're watching
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In the cut-throat world of City bankers, there are stories of people just waiting to bank their annual bonus cheques before clearing off to join a competitor. Then the employer stops the cheque - you would think a banker would know to wait for it to clear! A recent employment law case suggests that the employer couldn't legally do this. A worker was awarded a bonus, to be paid by instalments over a 12 month period. The employer imposed a condition that the worker would forfeit the bonus if she left. She thought the bonus was unfairly low, and asked to see the accounts on which it ought to have been based. The employer refused, and she resigned. Not surprisingly, the employer stopped paying the instalments. The Employment Tribunal upheld her claim that by imposing conditions on the bonus - which was supposed to have already been earned - and refusing to show her the accounts, the employer had "constructively dismissed" her. And refusing to pay the rest of the bonus was "an unauthorised deduction from wages". The employer argued in vain that a bonus isn't wages. Once it had been declared, she was entitled to it, and it couldn't be withheld. That's worth knowing, whichever side of this kind of argument you are on! |
© Bayar Hughes & Co., 2010.