Manager’s £2,000 wood claim chucked by Tribunal

Thursday 07 December 2017

A carpentry firm director has been told he can’t claim over £2,000 damages from an employee for not working hard or fast enough because he should have managed him better in the first place.

The claim was brought by Mr Pal, Director of General Carpenters, at an Employment Tribunal Hearing last week, as he fought against an order to pay the former employee £2,799.44 for unpaid wages and holiday.

Mr Slawomir Gil began working for General Carpenters in October last year. He began with very little knowledge of carpentry and no experience of joinery and was therefore expected to ‘learn on the job’ by watching Mr Pal in the workshop. 

After six months at the company, Mr Gil decided to leave. He and his employer parted on “good terms”, but, despite this, he found that he was still yet to be paid money owed to him months later.

Pictured: Mr Gil was employed without much experience, but was expected to learn on the job.

He brought his concerns to the Employment and Discrimination Tribunal in a bid to get his money, which led Mr Pal to file a counterclaim – that it was Mr Gil who should be paying him instead.

Mr Pal told the Tribunal that he had suffered losses to the tune of £2,006 due to Mr Gil’s “poor performance” on three occasions.

In the first instance, he said that Mr Gil had taken too long on a project, which led to a client refusing to pay. He therefore sought £456 for the sum of the hours worked by Mr Gil. 

At a later date on the same project, the client refused to pay again – this time in the region of £1,300. Mr Pal tried to claim back all of the hours worked by Mr Gil on the project.

On another occasion, Mr Pal accused his employee of having “wasted time” on the project – even though both parties agreed that the project was stifled by lack of materials. Mr Pal had told his employees to work on other jobs on site if they didn’t have the materials they needed, however. 

Pictured: Mr Pal's attempts to make his employee pay him more than £2,000 for "wasted time" were ultimately unsuccessful.

The client didn’t refuse payment, but Mr Pal still put in a claim for £250 for the alleged lost time.

At the time, however, Mr Pal continued to sign off his inexperienced employee’s timesheets, “despite allegedly receiving complaints of slow work and/or poor performance.” 

Moreover, the Tribunal heard that General Carpenters was suffering from “acute cash-flow difficulties and was struggling to pay its employees.” 

In addition, the company made no attempt to ask for money from Mr Gil until he brought his unpaid holiday and wages claim to the tribunal.

Chairman Hillary Griffin therefore rejected Mr Pal’s appeal. She said that, as the employer, Mr Pal held responsibility for managing his employee’s behaviour.  

In a written judgement, she commented: “Mr Pal’s evidence unequivocally showed that he was aware of low productivity levels and below-standard workmanship from as early as January 2017, and yet he did not seek to manage Mr Gil’s performance or to supervise him more closely.  

“In order to successfully claim for damages for breach of contract in these circumstances, the Claimant would have to show that Mr Gil’s conduct was negligent. I saw no evidence to suggest this to be the case.

“At worst, this was a performance issue which required management from the employer.”