This article is general information, not legal advice. Every case is examined on its own facts, and every cause of action has its own limitation period.

One date is printed on the payslip. A different date appears on the bank statement. The distance between those two dates is most of what a delayed-wage case is made of. The Wage Protection Law sets when the wage falls due, and from which day the delay acquires a name of its own, with a separate financial remedy attached to it. The question that reaches our firm is almost always the same: what is this delay worth. The answer moves on things that can be counted.

The date the law sets, and the days after it

The Wage Protection Law sets a payment date for the wage, followed by a short further window that the law still allows. A delay inside that window is not a delay in the legal sense. Once the window closes, the wage is defined as delayed, and from that day the calculation of delayed-wage compensation starts to run. So two lines settle most of it, the "amount payable" line on the payslip and the date the credit landed in the account. An employee who arrives with a memory instead, "it always turns up somewhere around the tenth", arrives without the figure that decides.

The law measures delayed-wage compensation by how long the delay lasted. Whether any harm followed does not enter the calculation, and an employee who managed that month without the money is measured against the same dates.

The wage was paid, and the compensation is a separate claim

Delayed-wage compensation is not interest on a debt, and it does not stand in for the wage. The legislature set it to give employers an incentive to pay on time, and it accumulates as the delay continues. The claim for the wage and the claim for delayed-wage compensation are two separate causes of action. The question that keeps coming back to our firm is "I got the money in the end, so is that it?" In that situation the wage has indeed been paid, while the delay itself remains a cause of action on its own. An employee who received the March salary in the middle of April, closing the debt, can still sue over the delay.

The same delay, very different sums

The Labour Court has discretion to reduce delayed-wage compensation, and it uses it. What moves the answer is where the delay came from and what happened next: an honest mistake by the employer, a genuine dispute over entitlement to the sum, or circumstances outside the employer's control. A one-off delay caused by a failed bank transfer, put right within two days, will usually be reduced almost to nothing. A fortnight's delay every month, six months running, after the employee wrote and was promised otherwise, is measured differently. A reduction is not automatic, and an employer who puts nothing on the table but financial hardship does not necessarily get one. The argument that comes back from the other side is that the sum was in dispute, and that there was therefore no delay in paying an agreed wage.

When the delay repeats every month

The Severance Pay Law recognises a situation in which an employee resigns because working conditions have materially deteriorated, or because of other circumstances in the employment relationship that make it impossible to carry on working, and treats that employee as dismissed for the purpose of the right to severance pay. Case law has recognised repeated delay in wages as circumstances of that kind, because failing to pay wages on time goes to the core of the employer's basic obligation to the employee. The entitlement does not open by itself. It turns on how often the delays happened and how severe they were. In other circumstances, say an employer who ran three months late and then went back to paying on time after a single letter, the picture is different.

What gets checked first: the dates against the payslips

An enquiry like this starts at our firm with two sets of pages laid side by side, the payslips for every relevant month, including the months that were paid on time, and the bank statements showing which day each payment landed. The employment agreement adds the date that was agreed, and the correspondence with the employer shows when the employer knew and what was said in reply. A case where all of that exists is argued on dates. A case where it is missing starts from two versions of a memory. Sometimes the comparison shows that the delay began in one particular month and hardened into a habit, and from that point a second question opens: whether the delays amount to resignation deemed dismissal.