Change to payment Schedule

leakey

I have been working in a company for 4 years. We get paid once a month, for the previous months work. It is stated in my contract that this is the arrangement.

It was announced today that we will get paid every five weeks from now on, for convenience apparently. We will still only get paid for four weeks.

I immediately pointed out that this is not acceptable, not only is it a change to the payment schedule, but it means that I will lose out on wages. My boss denies this, but I cannot see how this can be avoided if I only get four weeks wages every five weeks. I was essentially told to like it or lump it.

Any suggestions bar obviously quitting? I intend to, but I will still have to give a months notice.

Thanks.

dpofloinn

Are you unionised?

tatli_lokma

are you sure about the being paid less thing? Surely your annual salary will remain the same?
Think of it this way - some months have 5 weeks in them, others 4, some 4.5. But if you get the same amount on each salary it doesn't really matter.

So if you get say €24,000 and get paid on the last friday of every month, you will have 12 payments of €2000 in a year. Some months the €2000 will be for 20 days worked, others 21/22/23.
If you get paid your €24k every 4 weeks, you will have 13 pay periods of €1846.15
If you get paid every 5 weeks, you will have 10 periods one year, 11 the next. Your salary per period will be €2400. Having said that, paying every 5 weeks is a bit odd, and I have never come across a company doing this as it is more awkward.

Regardless of how the pay periods are divided, you should still get the same annual salary.

I think possibly you are misunderstanding the payment schedules? The only reason I can think of the change is because they want to allow a week in arrears to allow them to process the salaries. So for eg you work 4 weeks, then payroll have 1 week to process monies owed and you get paid in week 5 for the 4 weeks. You still get a 4 week salary, but you get it a week in arrears if you get me.
Eg you work 1st - 28th of the month. This equals X amount of salary. Payroll process your timesheets and you get paid your X amount 1 week later on the 5th or 6th (depending on number of days in the month). This continues on. You always get paid for 28 days, but it takes 35 days for the payment to arrive. The only time the extra week will be an issue is when you leave and at that point you will have to be paid pro rata for any days over the normal 28.

seamus

leakey wrote: »

I have been working in a company for 4 years. We get paid once a month, for the previous months work. It is stated in my contract that this is the arrangement.

It was announced today that we will get paid every five weeks from now on, for convenience apparently. We will still only get paid for four weeks.

I immediately pointed out that this is not acceptable, not only is it a change to the payment schedule, but it means that I will lose out on wages. My boss denies this, but I cannot see how this can be avoided if I only get four weeks wages every five weeks. I was essentially told to like it or lump it.

Any suggestions bar obviously quitting? I intend to, but I will still have to give a months notice.

This doesn't seem to make any sense, you have to be missing something. Getting paid for four weeks, every five, means that by the end of the year you will only have been paid for 40 weeks instead of 50.

It also means that the payroll dates are all over the place.

I think Little Ted is probably more on the money here in terms of how this works.

chris85

Doesnt sounds right OP. You sure you will not be getting paid on week 5 for the previous four weeks?

leakey

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you all.

We are not unionised. Relatively small company. There are a handful of employees getting paid monthly, the rest weekly (on an hously rate).

We get paid for 20 days of work, regardless of when the payment schedule falls. It does not particularly matter if our dates are moved, payroll is on a weekly basis in most cases.

If I get paid for 20 days of work and I only get paid every five weeks, that means that I am 5 days short. We have had an unofficial meeting here and this is very much what is happening. I suspect that they will hope that we have no comeback or that we will leave (still being owed money).

It is entirely typical of them to try to pull this kind of thing. There is no financial issues (another monthly paid person has access to this information and has confirmed this).

hardCopy

If that's the case it's more than a change to your schedule, it's a 20% pay cut. That sounds a very odd way to introduce a pay cut.

tatli_lokma

leakey wrote: »

We get paid for 20 days of work, regardless of when the payment schedule falls. It does not particularly matter if our dates are moved, payroll is on a weekly basis in most cases.

If I get paid for 20 days of work and I only get paid every five weeks, that means that I am 5 days short.

No it doesn't, it means you work 20 days, then on day 25 get paid for those 20 days. The next pay run will start from when the last one finished. You still get paid for the days you work.

For example

Work in April from 1st to 28th (this is 20 working days). Get paid 3rd May.
Work from 29th April to 25th May (again, 20 working days). Get paid 31st May. You still get paid for all the days you work. The extra 5 days just gives payroll additional time to administer the payroll.

You have had unofficial meetings and are going on hearsay as to how the company are performing financially. This is not the way to go. Unless this monthly paid person is the financial controller, they have no way of knowing how the company is performing.
It could simply be that the payroll dept are understaffed and rather than pay for more staff they have agreed to give them more time to process payroll each period.

Are all staff on a set 20 days salary? from what you say it seems like different staff are on different pay cycles and frequencies. If so, this could be a pain for payroll to administer and this is why they need the extra time to process it.

As long as you get paid for all the days you work in a year, I don't see the issue. As long as you get 13 pay periods for the year in question you are not being underpaid. The 13th pay period might come in early January, but it is still valid for the 260 days you worked in that year (260 = 13 pay periods of 20 days).