An employee who worked as a project manager has had his personal grievance claim for wage arrears rejected by the Employment Relations Authority.

The employee had a causal individual employment agreement and recorded his daily tasks in a personal diary. He would then email the hours he worked to his employer each week.

The ERA held that the employee was not entitled to claim 58 hours of work on a project after the employer issued a stopwork notice. The ERA found that the employee knew of the notice which required him to cease all work. The ERA held that charging for two hours of work was justified to clean up and secure the site before leaving, but the employee was not allowed to claim hours for work done at the request of the subcontractors.

The ERA found that the employee had also claimed an additional 8.5 hours for 30 minute lunch breaks and noted some discrepancies between the hours recorded on his job sheet and the hours recorded in his diary. The ERA also held that the employee claimed 1 to 1 ½ hours every morning to do business administration when only half and hour was required to complete that work.

The ERA held that the employee had received more money at the end of his employment than he was owed. Therefore, no payment of wage arrears was needed in the circumstances.