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It’s been a season to forget for Manchester United so far, with Erik ten Hag’s side struggling for any kind of consistent form on the field.
The club is also now facing a damages claim totalling £100,000 for accidentally emailing staff the wage slips of 167 colleagues.
As reported by Manchester Evening News, the blunder saw personal information including names, National Insurance numbers, wages, tax paid and pension benefits shared among a group of casual catering staff.
The incident had occurred back in 2018 and club officials have assured staff that relevant changes to the systems have been made to avoid a repeat of the breach.
However, each claimant is seeking damages of an average of £3,000, according to Jonathan Whittle, a senior manager and chartered legal executive at Your Lawyers who represented 32 of the persons involved.
Mr Whittle explained the incident and urged United to settle the claim to draw a line under the incident.
“They each received an individual email but attached were the wages slips of 167 casual workers who worked in catering for United.
“As far as I’m concerned, this is a clear and serious breach of data protection laws and ultimately Manchester United’s owners need to accept responsibility for what’s happened and resolve it as quickly as possible and pay the claimants the damages they deserve,” he said.
United responded by expressing their ‘regret’ at the situation which they did report to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at the time yet no further action was taken.
This was confirmed in a statement issued by the club that read: “We take the data privacy of our employees very seriously and regret this isolated breach, which occurred in 2018.
“Measures were put in place to prevent it happening again and we informed the Information Commissioner’s Office, which took no further action.”
All parties will hope for an amicable solution in the coming weeks as United will attempt to focus all their efforts in improving matters on the pitch.
Erik ten Hag’s men face a season defining fixture on Sunday with in-form Liverpool travelling to Old Trafford for an FA Cup quarter-final tie which represents United’s last chance for a trophy this season.
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