Owners of a bar hit by a tax scandal have been ordered to pay staff thousands of pounds in unpaid wages.
The Daily Record told last year how workers at the Blue Dog bar in Glasgow were locked out of the government’s furlough scheme amid major tax irregularities.
The workers launched a campaign to get back money they were owed with the support of the Unite Hospitality union.
And MPs, led by Stewart McDonald, called for an HMRC probe into the way shady payroll outsourcing companies repeatedly went bust, creating huge HMRC debt and causing carnage in the tax returns of employees.
More than a year on, 11 bar workers won a victory after being awarded £8,000 between them at a tribunal.
But all 11 were forced to leave the company, as they couldn’t get by on the £60 a week that bosses paid them after the furlough scheme blocked them.
The Blue Dog bar is trading on as normal under a new company, of which former boss Billy McAneney is also a director.
His former partner at Blue Dog, Alan Tomkins, who is renowned in the Scottish hospitality industry, severed his involvement with the business after the Record’s stories.
Unite Hospitality spokesman Bryan Simpson said: “We are delighted that the tribunal court has found in favour of our members who were unlawfully deducted wages during the pandemic ordering the owners to pay thousands to staff.
“This judgement should be a message to all unscrupulous hospitality employers that their workers are now unionising and they will be held to account.”
A former bar worker told the Record: “I’m happy that we managed to get back the money that was rightfully ours.
“But I think a stricter punishment should have happened to the owners though, as we’ve all collectively moved on to other venues and jobs to keep afloat while fighting this.
“Blue Dog continued on under ‘new ownership’ but our old boss Billy McAneney is a director in the new firm too.”
Another staff member said: “Billy and Alan made themselves out to be the good guys by paying us a pittance out of their own pockets.
“But the disparity between what was going on in our tax records and what the taxman was actually receiving was scandalous. It was ordinary people on low wages who were thrown into crisis because of the payroll irregularities.”
Tomkins and McAneney did not attend the hearing that took place over a video conference on March 7.
Neither Billy McAneney or Alan Tomkins responded to our request for a comment.
