Clocking cases – sick pay for five years?!
People get sick. It’s a fact of life. This is why employers and employees often have rules in place to deal with supporting long-term sickness in the workplace.
Imagine getting sick. Going on sick pay, then never returning, but continuing to get paid. Surely at some point, you’d say something?
Apparently, in this clocking case – not.
What happened?
Ronald Berry, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) subway maintenance worker from New York, went on sick leave in 2015, after suffering from high blood pressure and Asthma.
Every two weeks, he collected his paycheck without bother and received letters from the company about future training for his career and safety.
However, Ronald Berry had actually been fired in 2013 and somehow ended back up on the MTA payroll again in 2015, despite not working a day in over two years.
Five years, and approximately $250,000 later in wages, Ronald was discovered and terminated officially.
The lesson learnt:
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had a clear block of communication and paperwork between payroll and management, leaving this employee to slip through the cracks and be paid for work never done.
This expensive lesson is hopefully the last for MTA however, as they now use biometric technology to clock employees in and out, meaning any physical absence would be flagged.
If this technology had been implemented years ago, Ronald Berry would have been placed as a no show in the system. After payroll or management looked into this absence, they would have quickly seen that his contract was terminated in 2013 and stopped payments.
Find out more about our clocking systems here.
Any questions, or if you’d like to request a free online demo to see how clocking in with Citadel could work for you, call 01761 410015, email us or click the chat icon.
