Betfred underpaid staff for overtime work

Betting firm Betfred underpaid staff for working overtime and failed to let them know that they could be owed money once the problem was discovered.

The bookmaker failed to make automatic payments owed to staff for working overtime revealed a whistleblower to The Guardian recently.

Instead, it calculated holiday pay based on their contracted hours, which in many cases were far fewer than those that they had actually worked.

Law firm Leigh Day is helping staff who may have a legal claim against the company.

Correspondence between Betfred and Peter Dowd MP revealed that the company was aware of the problem and had promised to notify staff, but the whistleblower who alerted the Guardian said no alert had been received.

It was unclear how many of Betfred’s staff had been affected.

The whistleblower said: “I don’t know one person in there who doesn’t do overtime. Everyone does it because they don’t have enough staff.

“It’s disgusting that as workers on 10p or 20p more that the minimum wage we’ve put off taking holidays or are forced to work extra hours before a holiday to make up for the shortfall of wages that shouldn’t even be happening.”