Recording leads court to award garage worker unpaid wages

A Reykjanes District Court has ordered a car repair shop to pay a former employee nearly 700,000 krónur in unpaid wages for his notice period, mbl.is reports. The shop must also pay 1.24 million krónur in legal costs.

The dispute centred on whether the employee had been told to stop working before his notice period ended or had chosen not to return. The court said audio recordings of a conversation between him and the shop’s representative on April 1, 2025, were decisive.

The man had been hired to repair cars in April 2023. He resigned on March 20, 2025, with his final working day set for April 30. After an argument on April 1, he did not return to work. He said the shop had told him his work was no longer wanted; the shop argued that he had only been asked to leave that day because of his behaviour.

On the recording, the shop’s representative repeatedly told him to take his belongings and leave, and asked him to hand over his workplace key. The court found the exchange could only be understood as an instruction to leave permanently, meaning the employee could reasonably believe he did not have to work the rest of his notice period. The representative should have corrected that understanding when it became clear the man was not coming back, the court said.

The shop also alleged that the employee had performed poorly and behaved badly. The court found no evidence in the case file of complaints or warnings about his work. The recordings concerned events after he had resigned and could not establish what earlier relations at the workplace had been like. The court also found no basis to conclude that he had provoked the exchange in order to get fired.

The shop must pay 699,777 krónur for wages and holiday pay for April 2025, with late-payment interest from May 1. Including legal costs, the total payment is nearly 1.94 million krónur, in addition to interest. The judgment was issued on Thursday.