The 1870 Act applied where an employee’s contract was terminated in the course of a period at the end of which payment would be made. Scott J said: ‘Mr Goudie submitted that the real question was whether a teacher was entitled to be paid for the period of 35 minutes that he or she had not worked. Pay for that period, he said, had not been earned. In my judgment, this approach is fallacious. It involves regarding the teachers’ salaries as accruing minute by minute. There is no legal or factual justification for that view of the salaries. Under the contracts, the salaries are based on a yearly scale but are paid by monthly payments. Each month a contractual right to a salary payment vests in the teacher. By reason of section 2 of the Apportionment Act 1870, the salaries are deemed to accrue day by day. If a teacher’s contract were, in the middle of a month, to come to an end, by death, dismissal or some other event, section 2 would entitle the teacher, or his estate, to an apportioned part of the month’s salary payment,. So the salaries may be regarded as accruing day by day. But they do not accrue minute by minute.’
Though the contract was silent on the issue, there was and implied obligation on the part of teachers to cover for absent colleagues during non-teaching periods if requested to do so.
Judges:
Scott J
Citations:
[1987] Ch 216, [1986] ICR 897
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Fassihim, Liddiardrams, International Ltd, Isograph Ltd v Item Software (UK) Ltd CA 30-Sep-2004
The first defendant (F) had been employed by a company involved in a distribution agreement. He had sought to set up a competing arrangement whilst a director of the claimant, and diverted a contract to his new company.
Held: A company . .
Cited – Fuller v Happy Shopper Markets Ltd and Another ChD 6-Mar-2001
A tenant complained to the landlord about his failure to repair. He ceased paying rent, and the landlord eventually distrained for rent by direct action.
Held: The tenant was unable to claim a legal set-off because there was no context of . .
Cited – Hartley and Others v King Edward VI College SC 24-May-2017
The teacher appellants challenged the quantification of deductions from their salaries after engaging in lawful strike days.
Held: The appeal as allowed. The correct approach under section 2 to a case like this, where the contract is an annual . .
Cited – Hartley and Others v King Edward VI College CA 14-May-2015
The claimant teachers had been involved in a day’s strike action They objected that the employer had deducted 1/260 and not 1/365 of their annual salary.
Held: Section 2 of the 1870 Act did apply to a teacher’s contract, and the employee’s . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment, Education
Updated: 03 August 2022; Ref: scu.215867