Legal win on broken pay promise

An Employment Tribunal decision has forced subtitler Intelfax to honour a pay offer.

BECTU this week won an order compelling the company to pay the second increase in a two-year pay deal brokered by ACAS in May 2001. Staff received a 3% increase in 2001, but when the next instalment fell due in January 2002 Intelfax reneged on the pay agreement and refused to implement the increase that had been promised.

The company, which provides subtitling services to Channel 4, claimed that it could not afford to pay the second promised increase because of difficult trading conditions, but the union believed that a rushed expansion and poor investment decisions were at fault.

Efforts to reach a compromise that would guarantee the rise failed, and BECTU lodged claims with the Croydon Employment Tribunal, which found in the union's favour, and issued an order requiring the company to pay up.

Members at the company, and all other Intelfax staff, will now receive the 3% pay increase that they should have been given in January.

Union solicitors are waiting for the Tribunal's written explanation of its decision - BECTU's case was founded on the argument that the collectively-agreed pay deal was an alteration of members' contracts of employment, and therefor legally enforceable.