Mr W Merridith v National Friendly Financial Solutions Limited — 2021

Mr W Merridith brought a claim for unlawful deductions from wages against National Friendly Financial Solutions Limited. The tribunal heard that he was employed as a Sales Executive from 6 January 2020 and that the dispute arose from a change from an earlier bonus/commission arrangement to a new National Friendly scheme. The claimant objected to the clawback element of the new scheme and to a minimum monthly sales threshold, but the tribunal found that those objections did not produce an unlawful deduction from wages.

The tribunal held that if the claimant was still on the old scheme, he had in fact been paid more than he was contractually due in each relevant month. If he was on the new scheme, the scheme itself included clawback and the amounts paid to him reflected that scheme, so there was no unlawful deduction. The tribunal rejected the claimant's argument that he could accept the new scheme only in part, concluding that the contract was either unchanged or varied to include the whole new scheme, but not a hybrid of the two.

On the evidence, the tribunal accepted that the original scheme document with a discretionary element had not been shown to the claimant at the start of employment, and it found that the telephone conversation on 13 July 2020 was not enough to vary the contract because the claimant had not seen the detailed new terms when that conversation took place. It also found that from 15 July 2020 the claimant objected to elements of the new scheme and never accepted it in its entirety. The tribunal further found that the January 2021 pay increase letter applied only to basic salary and did not increase bonus or commission. The claim for unlawful deduction from wages was therefore dismissed.