On January 2022 I sued my previous employer (a well known international language center) for illegal salary retention. This was a practice that had been going on for almost 2 years, even going farther back than the pandemic.
I decided I had had enough, so I followed the resources my country has for such cases.
Firstly, we were supposed to go to a conciliation center, where we could verbally reach an agreement with a public servant as a witness. It was supposed to go for 3 sessions, where we could negotiate terms of payment. Needless to say, my then employer only showed up for the first session, and missed the others, never agreeing to anything.
It was then possible to properly sue, and take the issue to court. After the proper procedures, it was time to show the “proof” each party had to present.
I showed my bank statements for the whole previous year, in which my employer would delay payments for as long as 2 months each. I also showed a letter of recommendation previously signed by my employer which stated my antiquity (6 years). This letter was rejected by the judge, since it was handed in by the second session, but there was no way to fight it.
My employer used more “twisted” tactics, showing a false letter of resignation, as well as a false receipt stating I had received my final payment and was thus not owed anything.
I tried to ask for an expert to analyze the documents and prove they were fake (my signature was different and you could see a cut where the date of resignation was on the letter). But alas, corruption struck again, and the “expert” handed in a 6 page report saying the documents were legit. (Note that such reports would normally be about 30-40 pages long)
So I had pretty much lost the case as far as I could tell. Just as I was thinking about how to appeal, the verdict was published. I had won the case. I was not going to get paid my owed amount but instead the equivalent of a whole year of delayed payments.
The documents presented by my employer, while falsely stating I had received my owed payments, were dated with the time I left the company, and were for an amount that had been delayed for one whole month. So these suckers confessed to having delayed my payments by mistake. The judge also took into account my bank statements, which showed that the issue was ongoing for a long time.
Sadly, I cannot sing victory yet, since I was just told by my lawyer that my previous employer is planning to appeal the verdict. This would mean that the case will be re-evaluated by a higher court and everything could go downhill from there. But I'm optimistic. The expert evaluation was done by a government worker, who was possibly bribed by my previous employer, sadly I have little money to hire an independent expert to redo the analysis. In any case, the case is still under works, so… Yeah… Just wanted to vent.
tl;dr: My previous emplyer didn't pay on time. I sued. Even though they faked info I won the case but they might appeal the verdict and I have no money for further transactions.