Got only half of my salary

davidz

Hi, as in the title, I (and AFAIK all others in our company) only got half of our March salary due to "cashflow" problems etc..the company had a retention bonus also in place that was due to be paid September last year. We only received one third of that money so far...the company is owned by an American company and the CEO says we're profitable the only problem is cashflow....but in reality I'm very worried about the situation and can't even think what the story will be with the April salary.

My question is: can I do anything? Is there a legal way to enforce the payment from the company? I obviously have a written contract with pay etc specified and also have a signed agreement about the retention bonus.

TIA

seamus

You're entitled to be paid your full salary. There's nothing which allows your employer to defer payment of your wages because they're having cash flow problems. Quite frankly, it's not your problem but your employer has decided to make it your problem.

In my experience, failing to pay your employees is usually the swan song of any company. If you don't pay your employees, you don't get any work done and the company collapses. You can put debtors and vendors off for months, but not employees.

You can legally enforce payment from the company by taking the to court and suing them for the money they owe you. This is obviously a drastic step and could take a very long time. By which time the company is dead and you get nothing.

I would be worried. I imagine most companies could get away with this for two months at most before their employees stopped working. It's an indicator that the company is going down the pan but they're not telling you about it. I would be looking very seriously at jumping ship and then getting yourself on the list of debtors when the company goes into liquidation.

dade

I'd be worried too, if a company had a cash flow issue and couldn't pay salaries it would indicate to me two things, all cash is tied up in assets and can't be released. which is bad financial management IMO or that the company has used up all its good will with the banks, cant get a short term loan or overdraft in which to pay its employees, which is also bad financial management.

where i worked was in the t situation in august, and they managed to call in some of the money owed to them and are talking big about 2009 but to be honest i have no confidence in a management team that gets a company to the point that it has no free cash and no goodwill left whereby they can get credit.

Podman

seamus wrote: »

You're entitled to be paid your full salary. There's nothing which allows your employer to defer payment of your wages ...

... It's an indicator that the company is going down the pan but they're not telling you about it. I would be looking very seriously at jumping ship and then getting yourself on the list of debtors when the company goes into liquidation.

Someone I know is in the same boat, How would a person go about getting themselves on the list of debtors?

seamus

You need to find out who the liquidator is and contact them. I'm not entirely sure how you find this out.