Fair Work Agency recovers £59,000 for five agency workers

Five agency workers have recovered a combined £59,000 after the Fair Work Agency found that an IT recruitment business had withheld 19 days of pay. Individual payments ranged from £7,066 to £16,090.

The agency says the company relied on opt-out agreements that were not valid because required evidence had not been supplied to the hirer. Investigators concluded that withholding the money breached agency-worker rules and secured repayment without the workers bringing separate claims.

Acas guidance confirms that an agency must pay a worker on time even when the hiring organisation has not paid the agency. The case is anonymised and does not show how common similar underpayment is; recovery also came after money had already been withheld.

For these five people, however, enforcement converted a technical protection into real wages. The result shows that keeping contracts, timesheets and correspondence can give investigators a clear route to putting missing pay back where it belongs.

Sources

• Department for Business and Trade — Recovery of £59,000 for five IT agency workers
• Independent supporting source