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A supermarket manager accused by Lidl of fraud over his employees’ timesheets has won his claim for unfair dismissal at a Rotterdam court.

Sub-district Court Judge JC Halk found that fraud had not been proven and that even if it had, given the manager’s 17 years’ service, a stern warning would have been more appropriate than immediate dismissal.

Lidl alleged that the former manager, who is not named in the ruling, removed staff hours from the time and attendance system, even though they had actually been worked. According to Lidl, the hours were marked black, meaning they had been accepted by the system.

The manager acknowledged that he occasionally removed employees’ hours. But, according to him, this was because those hours were marked red, meaning that something was wrong with them, for example, no start or end time or no break, as a result of which the hours were not accepted in the system, or because they turned red for another reason, such as a system error.

It was not established in court whether the manager removed black or red hours. While Lidl argued that it conducted an investigation into the matter and thereby refuted the claim that red hours were involved, it failed to recognise that Lidl is the party that must demonstrate that black hours were removed. The judgment said that is different from refuting the claim that red hours were involved.

Judge Halk said the investigation conducted by Lidl was very superficial and, therefore, inconclusive. The fact that other managers did not see any red hours, did not mean that the former manager’s explanation could not be correct. For example, testing was not performed on his system account; indeed, he was not involved in the investigation at all.

“But be that as it may, even if [the former employee] had deleted ‘black’ hours, this does not constitute grounds for immediate dismissal under the circumstances,” she said.

She added that the manager had always acted transparently. Time sheets were posted weekly in the branch’s canteen so staff could see the hours recorded. The manager told the court that if someone approached him to say their hours were incorrect, he corrected this by filling out a “PZE” correction form. This is the procedure that Lidl believes must be followed, yet they accuse him of not doing so.

Lidl claimed to the court that staff had been disadvantaged and that it had suffered damage itself. “Neither of these is established, nor is it plausible,” said Judge Halk. “Staff could and still can claim payment for the hours actually worked by having a PZE correction form completed. If the staff do so and Lidl subsequently pays for the hours actually worked, it is also difficult to see how Lidl would suffer damage as a result. After all, although payment is delayed, it does not involve more hours than were correctly recorded.”

When the manager acknowledged that he accidentally deleted a training day for the assistant manager in December because he had forgotten that the colleague had training that day. He did, however, know that the colleague had not worked that day. Which was therefore correct. Judge Halk classified this under the expression “wherever work is done, mistakes are made”.

The court ordered Lidl Nederland to pay the manager €100,000 for unfair dismissal, nearly €37,000 in regular redundancy pay, his salary during his notice period, amounting to €31,000, and a penalty for back pay of €7,400. The total owed was over €170,000 (£145,000).

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The post Lidl to pay €170k to manager sacked for alleged timesheet fraud appeared first on Personnel Today.

Source: www.personneltoday.com

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