Employee of Samworth Farms Limited in Cropwell Bishop to be compensated over £2,600 following tribunal

An employee is due a sum of over £2,600 after a tribunal found that his employer had breached contract and made an unlawful deduction from his wages.

Mr R Hudson, a former worker of Samworth Farms Limited, based at Cropwell Bishop, issued a claim against his former employer that he was due compensation for overtime worked in 2021, and for unpaid wages between 2020 and 2021.

Following an employment tribunal on January 17, Samworth Farms was ordered to pay the Mr Hudson the gross sum of £1,000 for overtime worked for the period January 2021 to April 2021 and the gross sum of £1,677 for unpaid wages for the period from August 9, 2020, to April 30, 2021.

Employed as an anaerobic digester plant operator from January 2020, Mr Hudson alleged that his employer had breached his contract. He said that in or about the first week of August 2020, Russell Price, director at Samworth Farms, asked him to check the site at Cropwell Bishop every day from August 2020 for which he agreed to pay him £6.50 as a fixed rate for each evening.

Mr Hudson said he checked the application on his phone three times every evening and it would take him about five to 10 minutes each time to check if everything was running as it should.

However, Mr Price claimed there had never been any agreement to pay £6.50 for evening remote support work.

The tribunal concluded that there had been an agreement between Mr Price and Mr Hudson in August 2020 to carry out monitoring of the site and that he would be paid £6.50 for every evening that he did so and he was not required to record his time because the rate agreed was a fixed fee.