Woman wins battle over gratuity payment

A woman promised a gratuity payment after 30 years in her job says her employer Spotless Services put her through a "nightmare" after it refused to pay her out.

A determination from the Employment Relations Authority awarded Wanganui woman Val Hawtree $3000 for "unjustified disadvantage".

It is short of the $10,728 the company initially estimated she would receive.

The dispute goes back to 2009 when a Spotless manager wrote to Ms Hawtree who was a food services worker at the city's hospital. The letter said a retirement gratuity would be paid to her in December, two months after she retired.

Ms Hawtree never received the payment.

During the case, Spotless argued that discussions about Ms Hawtree's payment were conditional on her entitlement to it.

It discovered she had already been paid a $4,725.85 gratuity payment in 1996 by her previous employer Good Health Wanganui, now known as the Whanganui District Health Board.

Authority member Denis Asher said Ms Hawtree, who said she was not yet 60, retired because of Spotless's gratuity undertaking.

The company failed to go back to their employee to say it had made a mistake around the gratuity so as to give her a chance to revisit her decision about whether to retire or not, Mr Asher said.

"To that extent I accept the applicant has been disadvantaged: her divisional manager clearly agreed that, were she to retire, she would be paid a retirement gratuity. Ms Hawtree's reasonable expectation was unilaterally set aside."

Spotless's actions breached the obligations of a good, responsive and communicative employer under the Employment Relations Act "particularly toward a long serving employee whose services it is on record as valuing highly," Mr Asher said.

Ms Hawtree said she still felt raw about the dispute as she wouldn't have retired if the offer hadn't been made. She was disappointed with the $3000 determination which would not pay her legal costs.

She accepted a previous gratuity payment had been made but originally thought it was a super payout.

"I think this is a company that has very little regard for its workers at the end of the day. I felt that this was a ploy to get Val out of the door and then just ignore her and she'll go away.

"It's been a nightmare.

"They came to me like a donkey with a carrot which I followed and then at the end of the day took the carrot away."

The one good thing to come out of the case was that she was now working as a teacher aide, a job she loved, Ms Hawtree said.
Spotless did not respond to requests for comment.