A haulage firm which deducted more than £900 from a lorry driver's wages after he failed to repay a loan has been ordered to return the money to him by Birmingham Employment Tribunal. RK Logistics Solutions of Strathclyde, loaned the money to Wayne Cowell to enable him to take his C+E driving test to further his career as a lorry driver.
The Tribunal was told by managing director James King that the arrangement made between the company and
the driver was that Cowell would stay with the firm for at least a year after taking the test and would repay the loan in instalments from his wages. But King said that Cowell left after only two months with RK Logistics, shortly after he had passed the test at the firm's expense. "He left without paying the money back, so we deducted it from his final wages," King said.
King was opposing a compensation claim by Cowell for unauthorised deduction of wages. Tribunal chairman Ann Goraj said the firm faced losing the case because there had not been a signed agreement about how the loan should be repayed. To deduct wages without permission was a breach of the Employment Rights Act, she added. RK Logistics was told to pay Cowell £913. It is now trying to recover the loan from Cowell through the county courts.
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