Comment by mseebach
8 years ago
The bit about the manager and director is in the main article. There's nothing about pay, but they're presented as entirely sympathetic and angry about the system on his behalf.
As for "fishy", I find it very strange that someone writes an article emphasising twice that they're out three weeks of pay, but then couldn't be bothered to do anything about it. There's breach of contract, this isn't a long and arduous appeals process, it's open and shut, and if it isn't you have a lawyer deal with it, and recoup expenses, too. And if the guy just doesn't care about it, then why does he mention it twice?
And for the purposes of this, and the other sub-thread that is incredulous about this, this is not an American thing: If you're a contractor in Europe, and you don't get paid, and you then don't do anything about that, then you don't get paid. There's no process that automatically fixes things when the aggrieved party doesn't ask for them to be fixed (and yes, even in Europe, there's a bit of annoying process and paperwork to deal with).
The article is written, I think, to criticize the reliance on machines—not this individual company. I don't think he wrote it out of a grudge.
Even if he's legally entitled to the money, bringing a lawyer into the mix is likely to sour his relationship with his client (he's a contractor), and—rightly or wrongly—could give him a bad reputation in the local community, making it harder to find work in the future.
I'll also note that small, claims court might be able to handle a case over just a few weeks pay. He wouldn't need a lawyer for that. The risk and costs of losing are more manageable. He could send some emails about the pay he lost asking nicely citing the work he did while there. Then firmly. Then, once at a better employer, he can take the case to small, claims court.
I'd actually rather people sue over this to establish some kind of case law where companies' legal teams tell their management to make a default policy of giving the missed pay on demand. There might already be case law on it.