Docking Pay
 

It is permissable for an employer to dock your pay directly without your permission?

Reason I ask is a friend is leaving a certain company with an £8,000 bond outstanding. He has no problem paying the bond back on a reasonable payment plan. However the airline in question has decided to withhold his last 3 months (notice period) wages in full. He now has basically no money to live on and can't even pay his rent!

Doesn't seem right to me?

comments?

If its a UK company its completely illegal to withhold pay.

He might be able to leave immediately and get them on constructive dismissal.

Trading standrads first or BALPA will sort it out pretty quick.

If that is even within the EU get a lawyer as quick as possible to support him and get the company back on track and some earned money into his account. Good luck.

BlueBaron. Pray - tell all.
 

Well, it can't be Ryanair. No bonds there. People pay their own ratings.

Or was it a bond for Command training?

Surely you aren't talking about Britannia/Thomson are you? What a turn around from upper quartile to gutter if true.

It would depend on what you mean by "without your permission" and "£8000 bond outstanding"? If the contractual terms of that "bond" allowed your friends employer to make this deduction, and if your friend agreed to it, then section 13.1 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 would seem to have been complied with.

Reference

Some of the comments above are wishful thinking and nonsense.

Exactly the same happend to a colleague of mine a while back. This UK company did the same thing, same situation. He suid them and won. The company paid the money back and they worked out a repayment plan.

tell him to ring his Chief Pilot. Might find HR/Payroll are doing this without the CP's knowledge. It also depends what the conditions are ref re payment of bond, presuambly Blue Baron you'll ask your friend and let us know i.e. is it on departure or does it allow a reasonable payment plan -:\

I believ it is in his contract, but I would expect any company to be reasonable rather than take all his wages for the next 3 months!

I'll keep you posted.

When I left a previous company in the UK, my pay was docked in exactly the same manner. I just accepted that was part of the contract and that was that. It was all very amicable - we just agreed how much I owed them (the lady who did it was very generous in her interpretation of the bond!) and that was that. The great advantage of doing it that way is that you do not pay tax - if your pre-tax salary is £8k then you just do not get paid for you last month and off you go. If you have to find £8k in cash then you have to earn that and pay a pile of tax - it seems your friend is actually being done a favour.

Another factor in this, alas, is that historically a number of pilots have left a company and then just refused to pay their bond - that involves lawyers and hassle that employers do not want. Therefore I have considerable sympathy with the company. If you take a job that involves being bonded and then leave early, I have difficulty seeing what the problem is if they take it off your pay at the end. The bottom line is - be careful what you sign up to.

I was going to post exactly the same thing as Alexander , your friend may actually have saved himself well over £2k by now not paying any tax on this £8k outstanding bond , it's certainly something to think about.Best of luck!:)

B4S, you are not bonded in Ryanair because the company did not pay for your type rating.

Bluebaron, your friend needs to read his contract and see what he signed up to. If he agreed to a bond and wants to leave early then he needs to buy his way out. It is not an unauthorized deduction from his pay if he authorized it by agreeing to it in the contract. As Alexander said, it is probably preferable to buy his way out pre-tax rather than using taxed future income.

I have little sympathy for pilots who jump their bonds - the airlines who invest in a pilot are rightly aggrieved if they don't get a return of service and that is probably partly responsible for airlines requiring pilots to self fund TRs.

By taking the bond out of pre taxed income the employer actually saves more than the cost of the bond as they will have to pay considerably less national insurance contributions and also less pension contributions

The point I was making was not that he wanted to skip his bond but rather that the company is taking his entire salary for the next 3 months leaving him nothing to live on.

He is quite prepared to sit down and come up with a reasonable payment plan.

Seems rather harsh to me. Also they won;t take it pre-tax as the taxman does not count a training bond as 'training required to do the job', go figure?!

Also worth noting that he paid £20K upfront this £8K was for line training or some crap like that. He will have paid around £28K for a 757 rating. But at least he's managed to get a job with an airline that repects pilots now so thats something.

No point talking to a lawyer if this was in his contract and he signed up to it but may be worth talking to accountants regarding the tax issue.

Couldn't he simply take out a loan for £8000 and live off that for the next 3 months? The contractual obligations are then satisfied. Your friend can then tailor any repayment plan to his own needs. That is what banks are for.

Sounds like Yorkshire's finest "2 Jets"!
What a delightful industry this is...

Perhaps, if he's joining a company that respects pilots he might want to follow their lead and cough up for BALPA membership, which would now be fighting his corner, rather than using an anonymous "dial an amateur barrack room lawyer.com" forum :\

Yes, except they probably have a few issues of their own when it comes to legal fees!

If a Driver in the Haulage Industry was Bonded for whatever reason, ie: upgrade of Licence and was then informed that he was going to be Paid nothing for the next 3 months on account that he"s found a Better Job and he"s Leaving, me thinks that he would be telling them to Shove their 3 months notice where the Sun don"t shine, however, he would probably lose his month in hand pay.

I Suspect you Pilots are made of more Respectable Material and will do the Gentlemanly thing, work for 3 months on Possibly the Hardest Roster you"ll ever encounter in your Flying Career knowing full damn well that you"ll not Earn a Penny at the end of it. http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...lies/sowee.gif

You will find that BALPA membership does NOT guarantee they will be "fighting in your corner" in any personal, aviation related dispute. BALPA are VERY selective deciding the legal battles they fight for individual members.