The employees, registered market porters, appealed against reversal of the Tribunal’s judgment that the employer had made unlawful deductions from their wages. The deductions purported to have been authorised under collective agreements from the 1970s. The employers dedcuted porterage charges from the stall holders, and distributed the charge among all the porters, saying that the collective agreements had been terminated. The appellants said that the charge should be divided only between registered porters. The arguments had centered in whether the 1974 agreement could be taken to refer only to registered porters, when there were at the time, non-unregistered.
Held: The appeal failed: ‘The 1974 agreement is no doubt about registered porters, and can fairly be read as directed to identifying their entitlement to ‘porterage’. The reason, however, that it focuses on registered porters is because, at the time it was made, registered porters were the only species of porter known to the Market. It appears to me, however, unreal to interpret the agreement as intended to prescribe that, in circumstances in which the qualifications to work as a porter in the Market changed, and unregistered porters could also lawfully work there, the porterage earned by all porters was nevertheless to be paid exclusively to registered porters.’
Judges:
Sir John Thomas P QBD, Moore-Bick, Rimer LJJ
Citations:
[2013] WLR(D) 220, [2013] EWCA Civ 412, [2013] ICR 1139
Links:
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Appeal from – Gilgrove Ltd and Another v Hay and Others EAT 10-Apr-2012
EAT UNLAWFUL DEDUCTION FROM WAGES
CONTRACT OF EMPLOYMENT – Incorporation into contract
By a 1974 collective agreement, incorporated into the contracts of employment of Covent Garden Market porters, . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment
Updated: 17 November 2022; Ref: scu.472994
