Rights of WP holders

[debtblue]

Hello there

Can anyone please tell me what are the rights of a work permit holder??

I came on WP and my salary was supposed to be £30k but i am only being paid £20k. How does legally this company stands?? and what can i do about it???

I dont want to lose this job either, so i accepted £20k.
Please advise.

thanks

[Christophe]

I don't think that the your rights as a work permit holder would differ from the rights of any employee in this regard.

In industries where no 'award' applies, your salary depends essentially on what you and the employer agree to. An agreement can be oral or written. So, for example, if a prospective employer, orally or in writing, offers you a job at salary X, then that is effectively a legally binding offer which you can accept or not. The fact that, for example, a different salary might have been mentioned in an advertisement for the job is not really relevant; if you accept the job offer at salary X, then there is no legal issue there.

On the other hand, if the employer offered you a job at salary X and you accept that offer but then you are paid salary Y instead, that would not be legal.

So you probably need to be a bit more specific about who exactly said what and when... And does your written contract of employment accord with what you were offered?

[debtblue]

So you probably need to be a bit more specific about who exactly said what and when... And does your written contract of employment accord with what you were offered?[/quote]

My Work Permit states £30k, my contract £20k, which is legal here??? I m really confused, so according to you salary mentioned on a wrok permit for my profile is irrelevant!!

please reply

[Christophe]

Someone else with more expertise in the law than I have will have to reply, but have no fear - I'm sure that such a person will be along soon...

[try-one]

Your work permit shows the ammount that the company told the Home Office that your salary was going to be. The work permit is an agreement between the Home Office and the company to allow a foreign national to work for them...it is an immigration agreement not an employment agreement.
Your contract with the company should reflect the same information that the company told the Home Office; if your salary is below what the company presented to the Home Office then your conditions of employment changed and most likely the WP is not valid.

In other words, the company may be in breach of the WP approved by the Home Office; in this case the only affected party is you! Please consider that when you try to apply for ILR Home Office may tell you that your salary was not what they approved on the WP and you should not have been working for that salary. I would recommend you get professional help to confirm if the salary difference is not a change on the employment and you don't have to report it to Home Office; better yet, find a new employer. I don't think you can use the WP to imply that your employer should pay you more, your contract is for 20K not for 30K; whatever the employer told the HO is not an agreement with you neither a contract.

[Dawie]

Because your employment contract states that your salary is £20k per year and you (presumably) have read it and signed it there is nothing much you can do now to change the situation. You read the employment contract and you agreed to it in the full knowledge of what the salary stated on it would be. Forgetting the work permit aspect for a moment, from a purely employment law perspective there would appear to be nothing legally wrong here. You signed an employment contract and the terms of that employment contract have not been broken.

The work permit is not a contract of employment, but it is a legal immigration document that states the terms and conditions of employing a foreign worker. In order not to be in breach of the work permit conditions your employer should have made your salary at least as much as what was stated on the work permit. By not doing this your employer is in breach of immigration law, but not in breach of employment law as they are paying you exactly what is stated in your employment contract.

Unfortunately you really are stuck between a rock and a hard place here. The only authority you can really complain to about this is the Home Office. But if you do this you risk having the company investigated and possibly losing your work permit and job and having to go back home.

[hereagain]

Yeah I've heard there's a compliance team that can make visits and take work permits off people and curtail leave if there are breaches. Would the permit have been approved if the company declared the actual salary of 20K rather that 30k? Who knows....

[touchsensor]

If this might help-A friend of mine's work permit was approved and the salary the company showed to HO was £22K. Now her salary is £35K and the work permit was done in Jan 06.

Good Luck!

[Dawie]

If this might help-A friend of mine's work permit was approved and the salary the company showed to HO was £22K. Now her salary is £35K and the work permit was done in Jan 06.

Good Luck!

The Home Office is only concerned if your actual salary is lower than that stated on the work permit because then there are concerns about undercutting the wages of local workers.

[olisun]

I dont want to lose this job either, so i accepted £20k.

You accepted it and now you want to take an action against the employer...it's a waste of time.. you knowingly signed the document

Either live with it or find another employer who will pay you more and sponser you a new WP.