CAB staff deal with 50,000 issues

Feb 6 2012

In 2010-11 staff at Citizens Advice Bureaux (CAB) in Scotland helped people with 50,756 employment issues.

Complaints included employees changing workers' terms and conditions, so that their hours are cut or they are expected to increase their workload without receiving a corresponding pay rise.

Others reported being underpaid on their wages, not being paid for overtime or being paid less than the national minimum wage.

People also turned to Citizens Advice for help because their employers were withholding redundancy pay or because they had been dismissed for attempting to stand up for their rights at work.

A man who had worked as a contract driver for a delivery service contacted an East of Scotland CAB after his hours were reduced from 30 to nine hours per week. The man cannot support himself or his family financially on this reduced wage and is having to borrow money from friends and creditors to survive. He believes that his employer is "forcing him out" to avoid paying redundancy.

A North of Scotland CAB was contacted by a woman who left her job as a waitress because her employer had been falsifying the records of the hours she had worked and had been underpaying her on a regular basis. In effect, this means she and others were being paid less than the national minimum wage.

A young woman turned to a West of Scotland CAB because she had refused to sign a form at her work in a hairdresser's salon, which would have tied her to an hourly wage of £2.26, despite the fact she was entitled to be paid the national minimum wage. Her employer told her she was not sacked, but not to come back to work.

A West of Scotland CAB was contacted by a female under the age of 18 who is being paid less than the minimum wage. She recently started working at a cafe and noted she is being paid £2.74 per hour.

In another case staff at a West of Scotland CAB were told a 60-year-old woman was given a month's notice by her company's new owners, who said she was too old to learn the new computer programs and doing so could affect her mental health. The woman had worked in this role for 20 years and was told she was not entitled to redundancy pay because she is too old.

A man who was dismissed for reporting his employer to HMRC for not paying tax and national insurance contributions contacted an East of Scotland CAB. The man had been given hand-written pay slips without a tax code and telephoned HMRC, who informed him that his employer was not registered and was not paying tax. The client told his employer that he needed a P46 and a tax code, but was promptly dismissed for being "disloyal".