It's that time of year again when those enterprising wealth-creators who have failed to pay the proper minimum wage to their staff are named and shamed. The tightwad penny-pinching miscreants broke the law in the following ways:- 39% of employers deducted pay from workers’ wages. 39% of employers failed to pay workers correctly for their working time. 21% of employers paid the incorrect apprenticeship rate. Notice the large amount of unauthorised deductions from wages. This is getting more and more common. They are NOT allowed to make deductions from your wages unless there's a court order (like child maintenance) or you agreed to it in your contract. They CANNOT stop your money because "the till is short", "Stock has gone missing", "you broke something" or any other inventions they might come up with. Also they cannot insist on a 'dress code' if the cost of that takes you below minimum wage. This is common in care for example. With most companies they insisted that we must wear black trousers while working - to be supplied by us. As we were on minimum wage, that's illegal. If they want black trousers, they must buy you black trousers. Another common one of late (again common in care) is to insist that you must do hours and hours of online training in your own time at home. Many would like for this to be unpaid. Illegal. They want you to do their work or to train for their work, they have to pay you. More than 200 companies are named and shamed on this year's list and some big ones too. Marks & Spencer, WH Smug, Lloyds Chemists, Argos. All of course are entirely innocent and it's all been some horrible mistake and oversight which they've immediately corrected once the matter came to their attention - thanks to the HMRC inspectors.... There are two Hertfordshire scofflaws. 1. All Day Recruitment Ltd of Church Street in Rickmansworth - run by a couple called Gavin and Maria Dicckinson apparently. They short-changed 25 of their staff by a total of £4,896.57. Their website says they've been going since 2002 and that they have "gained a reputation for reliability, quality and performance". Now they are reputed for their chisling and law breaking. Despite intensive googling, I can't find any record of Gav and Maria making any apology or giving any reasons why they weren't able to pay their employees the proper rate. 2. McNicholas Construction Services Limited of Elstree - Although they're listed as being in Elstree, all their directors seem to be registered in Salford. Jaime Foong Yi Tham and Martin Pendlebury-Green are some of the owners. They kept a grand total of a whopping £170,517.57 for themselves rather than pay it to 704 of their workers as they should have done. Phew! £170 grand! Obviously all a terrible mistake though and lessons have been learned, although they have so far seemingly remained mum about the whole business. It was probably a mistake similar to that which in 2019 got them kicked off the governments 'Prompt Payment Code' where businesses pay their suppliers within 60 days of invoice. The company is valued at £7.8 million by the way. Interesting to note from the world of football, that Oxford United found themselves accidentally short-changing £10,826.74 to 31 workers.
It was clearly all on oversight; someone forgot to massage some figures correctly prior to submission. And we can’t have you care workers rocking up in (hushed breath) dark navy trousers, can we.
It's a mystery to me how WH Smith are still trading at all. Their shops are so dated that they could pass as sets straight out of Life On Mars/Ashes To Ashes.
Argos are ****. Both my last two orders have failed and I am still trying to get my money back for the second.
Quite right. They sell lots of different things but don’t have a great range in any of them, particularly in the standard smaller shops. Very reminiscent of Woolworths before their demise.
The Rickmansworth shop usually has an excellent Terry's chocolate orange promotion - half price with every Pritt stick or small bottle of Tipp-Ex purchased. In fact, since Halfords in the High Street closed I spend most of my time browsing in Smiths
I read the thread title as 'Non minimum wage players'. I thought 'Christ, what's Clive on? It's obviously all of them', lol.
I wondered this too until recently. Whilst I appreciate airport prices are generally higher, £3.79 for a f**king lighter gives you a clue as to how they’re still going. I expect in the not too distant future they’ll be gone from the high street and only operating at airports & train stations.
Yes, I'd agree - I'm in Birmingham at least one a week for work and the Smiths at New Street is always bustling.
