Paying Employee Family Member

birdgirl

We had an employee send a family member to perform her custodian duties without prior authorization of the substitution. The employee was non-exempt and has since been terminated for this. My question is - are we responsible for paying her family member for the work done? Can it be considered contract employment since they were not really hired? Hmm...

Don D

Legally the substitute was not an employee or a contractor of the company; however, this is rather common in the cleaning industry across the nation. I would include the pay in with the terminated contractor's pay and let them pay their sub, as they probably already agreed to do. If your building got cleaned up that night, pay for it without regard to who did it. The performance breach problem is with the contractor, not the substitute cleaner. The service should be paid for. If the contractor took you to court for non-payment (let's say it was $2000), I suspect he would prevail by claiming he thought it was OK to do that and wasn't precluded in the contract, and even though you were unaware, he's done it twelve times in the past.

Pork

Based on your post; "Dandy don" has it right on, pay for the work accomplished as if it was the proper person inaccordance with your contract. The unauthorized member of the cleaning team is a seperate issue that you would most likely win as a breach of the contract. However, the service was provided and the company should pay and move on! Pork