‘Bar paid us in pocket money’
WAITRESS CLAIMS SHE IS MISSING PAY
STAFF were given “pocket money” sums to keep working at a troubled restaurant despite struggling to pay their rent and bills, a former waitress has claimed.
The Glass House bar and restaurant in Cramlington, Northumberland, closed under a cloud this week amid protests from disgruntled employees.
Many claimed they had missing wage payments, while the former owner blamed “tough trading” and “Brexit costs pressures” for why he was forced to close the business.
Now, 17-year-old Bethany Walley has spoken out about the problems she and her colleagues say they faced at the bar.
Bethany started working at the Glass House when it first opened in September, leaving on February 17.
She is among a large number of former employees who have contacted us alleging the business failed to pay expected wages.
Bethany said she’d initially been told pay would come weekly – but waited two weeks for her first wage packet. When she left, she believes she was owed for seven weeks work.
She said: “That’s how it started. They kept saying ‘we haven’t got enough to pay you so we’ll have to pay next week’.”
At first, she says, cash was handed out with proper pay slips, but eventually came in plain envelopes with that week’s sum scribbled on the front by hand.
Because of the backlog, Bethany said she would receive money for shifts worked several weeks ago, making it harder to keep track of exactly how many hours she had been paid for.
Bethany, from Cramlington, was able to walk to work and had a secure place to live, but said co-workers were left with electricity going off, and one friend lost her flat because she couldn’t regularly pay rent.
“We were all really close friends because we stuck together when we were there,” Bethany said.
“I know some people would drive in and they would be owed so much they couldn’t afford to fill up their cars.
“They’d go in and tell the manager and he’d get cash out of the till for petrol.
“They would give you £20 or £30 and expect you to live on that for the week until they had enough money in the tills to give you more.
“They’d say ‘we haven’t got enough money this week, so we’ll pay you next week – and it’s down to you guys to work hard so we take enough’.
“Pocket money, that’s what it was, giving us it so we would come in the next day.”
The teenager left her job in February because she had managed to secure another job in a care home.
But she believes she’ll never see what she claims she is owed, and won’t be able to claim the money through insolvency funds because she had left by the time administrators were called in.
Bethany said: “I did want to work hard for them because at the start it was really good, but things just started getting worse and worse.”
In a statement, former owner Mark Nigrelli thanked staff for their “hard work trying to help over come this difficult time”.
He said: “As a small independent company there has been many factors as to why we decided to close our doors.”
He added the company did not have ‘huge financial backing’ and the combination of ‘rising Brexit costs’, lower footfall, expenditure and the recent bad weather hadn’t helped.
He added: “As a company we have always re-invested into the business to help make it work which unfortunately didn’t succeed at our Cramlington branch.”
Mr Nigrelli did not want to respond directly to the claims of missing wages.