Miss A Lune v Metaverse Recruitment Ltd — 2022

Miss A Lune was employed by Metaverse Recruitment Limited, then called Propello ATA Limited, as a Content Creation Assistant from 22 October 2021. Her contract provided for 25 hours a week at £8.91 per hour, Monday to Friday, with one hour unpaid lunch, and allowed the respondent to require holiday on specified days. The respondent did not attend the hearing, and the tribunal relied on the claimant’s statement, contract, bank statements and payslips.

The tribunal found that the claimant had not been paid for the two-week introductory training at the start of the contract, and that nothing in the contract excluded payment for training. It also found that she had not been paid for work carried out on 29 and 30 November 2021. Those items totalled £534.60.

On the days before she started work in the Games Development Department, the tribunal held that the contract did not say the claimant would only be paid if she was given work, and there had been no discussion that she would not be paid on those days. It therefore found she was entitled to pay for 22 October, 8 to 12 November, and 15 to 16 November 2021, amounting to £364.40. For the period 23 December 2021 to 3 January 2022, the tribunal accepted that the respondent could require holiday to be taken and that the claimant had already used her holiday entitlement, so no wages were due for ordinary holiday days. However, the contract also entitled her to the usual public holidays, and the tribunal awarded three days’ pay of £133.65 for that period.

The tribunal rejected the claimant’s request to recover alleged Universal Credit underpayments said to have resulted from incorrect earnings information sent to HMRC, holding that it had no jurisdiction over that issue. It ordered the respondent to pay the claimant a gross sum of £1,032.65 for the unauthorised deduction from wages claim.