Leaving Job - Last Pay Very Wrong!

[buffymad]

Other half is leaving his job on Monday. Got paid on Thursday and it’s wrong. Payslip somehow shows a different (reduced) monthly gross salary! Holidays have strangely been paid at correct rate but extra 2 days he should have been paid for haven’t been added. This isn’t the first (or 2nd or 3rd) time they’ve messed up.

Looking into it now but know from experience they take their time doing anything about it. As he leaves on Monday he’s worried they’ll delay it further on purpose.

Would he be within his rights to say he isn’t handing his work phone and keys back until the money situation has been sorted? Or is that opening up another can of worms?

[Ellipsis]

If he's leaving on Monday he's leaving part way through the month, so should expect his monthly salary to be lower. There's another three working days in March after Monday, and three days is quite a large percentage of normal monthly working days.

[Buenchico]

I doubt that a court would rule that a lien has been created by contract, or under common law, in respect of the phone and the keys. (A lien is the right of someone to hold onto property until they receive payment. e.g. a motor mechanic can refuse to give a car back to its owner until he's been paid for the repairs that he was asked to carry out but that's because there was a contract between the mechanic and the vehicle owner that specifically related to the car).

If your OH were to hold onto the phone and keys without having a lien though, then he's committed the tort of 'conversion'. However that's only a civil offence, not a criminal one, so the employer would have to sue your OH to get a court order for their return. (He couldn't be prosecuted for the criminal offence of theft, as the legal definition of theft requires that the offender must be seeking to permanently deprive the owner of his property which, clearly, he's not trying to do).

Getting property back from a former employee who's keeping hold of them can be far from easy. Just ask NatWest!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-59578954

[Peter Pedant]

actually it is taught in the law schools a lien DOES allow you to steal your own property - under the Theft Act 1968 ( Glazebrook)

so I would be OK with the other side of Buen's argument

big thing is if one is created by the circs you describe.
I might try it: "the keys come back when my income comes - purely as a spur to get you to act....
bearing in mind that a lien has been created by your negligence".
This is an employment issue and any allegation of theft will be matched by a mirror allegation that YOU have stolen my loo-loo