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Driver wins £750 in back pay
Page 33
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A DRIVER sacked after a minor accident has won more than £750 in back pay at a Glasgow employment tribunal at which his employer failed to turn up.
Paisley-based Baird Express Freight was ordered to pay Erskine lorry driver James McGuinness £757.72 in unpaid wages.The tribunal heard that McGuinness had been employed by the company as a night driver, running an artic between Glasgow and Heathrow Airport. On 23 October he returned to the company's yard at 4.30am . While manoeuvring his vehicle into a parking space he accidentally scraped the tractor unit against the trailer. The yard was unlit and there was nobody present to assist him. It was so dark in the yard that he was unable to see the extent of the damage. McGuinness telephoned Ian Baird junior,a director of the company, to explain and Baird dismissed him. Since then, McGuinness had not received his wages for the weeks ending 11 and 25 October.Although he received a cheque for his wages for the week ending 18 October, the cheque was stopped.
The tribunal said that in the absence of any evidence that McGuinness had agreed to the non-payment, it concluded there had been an unlawful deduction from his wages. His accidental collision with the trailer when he had completed an overnight journey from Heathrow Airport when there were no one available to guide him and no lighting, came nowhere near a fundamental breach of his employment contract.