Employers who do not pay their workers the National Minimum Wage will face penalties of up to £20,000 per employee, the Government is expected to announce this week in the Queen’s Speech.
Under the reform employers will be given penalties of up to £20,000 for each individual worker they have underpaid, rather than the maximum penalty of up to £20,000 applying to each employer as is currently the case. In the most serious cases, employers can also face criminal prosecution.
The financial penalty percentage that employers pay for breaking minimum wage law increased from 50 per cent to 100 per cent of the unpaid wages owed to workers and the maximum penalty from £5,000 to £20,000 by secondary legislation, effective from 7 March 2014.
The crackdown on rogue employers follows the introduction of a series of tougher Government measures to clamp down on employers that break National Minimum Wage law.
These include a new revamped naming and shaming scheme, whereby employers who fail to pay the minimum wage are publicly named. The previous scheme resulted in just one employer being named.
Under the new scheme, the Government has already named its first five employers. Between them they owe workers a total of over £6,800 in arrears and have been charged financial penalties totalling £3381.40. The Government will be naming other employers that break minimum wage law very soon.
Source: www.andrewstunnel.org.uk
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