The government has fined 139 employers who failed to pay their staff the minimum wage. As reported in The Guardian a list of national minimum wage offenders has been published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
The business minister, Paul Scully, said: “Paying the minimum wage is not optional, it is the law. It is never acceptable for any employer to short-change their workers, but it is especially disappointing to see huge household names who absolutely should know better on this list.”
A hotel group controlled by the multi-billionaire tax exile Sir Jim Ratcliffe had failed to pay £13,790 to 25 workers, which the company said related to “inadvertent breaches of very complex regulations” following “deductions made for staff accommodation and uniform deposits”.
A spokeswoman for the company said that the company had reimbursed staff, had been fined £6,000 by HMRC and that Ratcliffe “has no involvement in the day-to-day running of the company”.
Jeni Morris, head of the national minimum wage team at accountants EY, added: “In my experience, most employers do not deliberately flout the NMW rules, but are inadvertently caught out by a number of technicalities in the complex legislation.”
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