Employees of high street fashion retailer River Island have finally been paid after Christmas, three days later than they should have been.
Thousands of frustrated staff across the UK, who were expecting wages to go into their accounts on Friday 2 January, have only been paid today after a technical ‘glitch‘ in the company‘s payroll system failed to pay out its workers on time.
Employees, including Christmas temps who are just tying up their interim contracts, took to social media to record their vexations.
On January 1, River Island asked its Twitter following ‘What‘s everyone up to this New Years (sic) Day? #2015‘ to which one irritated employee responded with ‘Waiting for you to pay me?‘ on what should have been payday.
The retailer, which operates more than 300 stores in the UK, explained to staff on Friday that the issue arose “due to an unexpected delay in processing the BACS file” and as the preceding day had been a public holiday, the file was being processed on payday itself, with payments due to debit accounts the next working day. Unfortunately for staff, the weekend meant that payday was to arrive 3 days late.
Reportedly, River Island gave the go-ahead for staff to be given money from tills, with store managers able to put forms into head office. The fashion chain also agreed to refund bank charges incurred as a result of the delay in payments, provided receipt of appropriate proof was delivered.
Following the wage anomaly, more than a few of those on Christmas contracts cited on Twitter that they were happy to have been leaving River Island.
A notice from the company‘s payroll controller, Nigel Barrett, asked workers to accept their employer‘s “sincerest apologies for any inconvenience caused”.
