An insurance firm that allegedly recouped an entire monthly paycheck from a sales representative in an attempt to recover previously disbursed bonus payments, has been instructed to refund the deducted money. The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), in a decision unveiled on Tuesday, addressed the unfounded claims by Ur Insurances (Europe) Ltd, also known as Actual Insurances, stating that their employee, Alan Rooney, was indebted to them for almost €5,000 worth of commission refunds.
Actual Insurances had rejected Mr Rooney’s complaint about illegal wage deductions per the Payment of Wages Act 1991. Arguing that Mr Rooney fell short of his sales objectives and therefore received excessive commission payments, the firm carried out the deductions. During a June 2023 tribunal hearing, Mr Rooney expressed his disbelief regarding the company’s actions of withholding his complete final monthly gross salary of €2,500, when he quit in February that year.
The WRC heard how the company had processed these deductions through their payroll, and remitted the income tax to Revenue Commissioners. However, an amount of €2,138.58 was deducted from Mr Rooney’s net income, representing the income for the entire month.
Albert Noonan, a company director, provided testimony that Mr Rooney’s sales rate had been declining. Another director, Ger Noonan, revealed that they had been awarding Mr Rooney partial commission as motivation. The company’s standpoint was that Mr Rooney had underachieved his sales targets and that they had the right to retrieve the previously dispensed commissions.
Mr Rooney refuted the company’s allegations saying that he earned his commission by reaching his monthly sales targets. Mr Rooney claimed that the firm was attempting to blur the lines between basic pay and commission structure. He stressed that failing to hit sales objectives after acquiring previous commission targets does not equate to overcompensation. He noted that during his tenure, a monthly rolling sales target of €8,000 was set, and any deficiencies were carried forward to the subsequent month’s quota.
Mr Rooney spoke about the high and low points of his sales performance during his stint at Actual Insurances, and added that the primary reasons behind his resignation were the job stress and the accumulated shortfall in his sales target. David James Murphy, the adjudicator of the case, asserted that Mr Rooney’s final monthly salary was, naturally, rightfully his due.
Mr Murphy pointed out that the company attempted to use an overpayment of wages as a defence for the deductions made, but clarified that the firm had never overpaid the complainant at any instance. Responding to the directors’ justification that the sum was deducted due to their dissatisfaction with Rooney’s performance, he noted furthermore that there was no evidence of Mr Rooney endorsing such a deduction, nor had the company ever proposed such a deduction to him.
He definitively stated that there was absolutely no logical ground for the company to claim that the employee was or ever had been indebted to them for a sum of €4,932.
Concluding the case, Mr Murphy instructed the company to compensate Mr Rooney an amount of €2138.58 for his deserved wages in February 2023.