The Government have released the latest information around National Minimum Wage compliance through it’s naming and shaming process which re-started in August 2020. Details of HMRC investigations were released through the Business Minister, Paul Scully, and confirmed that 191 businesses are being named for breaking national minimum wage law.
Following investigations, a total of £2.1 million was found to be owed to over 34,000 workers and these breaches took place between 2011 and 2018. Named employers have since been made to pay back what they owed, and were fined an additional £3.2 million, showing it is never acceptable to underpay workers.
The release confirmed minimum wage breaches can occur when workers are being paid on or just above the minimum wage rate, and then have deductions from their pay for uniform or accommodation.
The employers named today previously underpaid workers in the following ways:
- 47% wrongly deducted pay from workers’ wages, including for uniform and expenses
- 30% failed to pay workers for all the time they had worked, such as when they worked overtime
- 19% paid the incorrect apprenticeship rate
Full details of where errors occurred, and those companies being named and shamed can be found here
