NMW: If I work a 1/2 hour shouldn't I be paid half my hourly rate?

Russe11

The question to ask here is, are you paid by the clock? or are you paid what it says on your time sheet and the clock is just there to check attendance.

I think the most likely answer is some is filling out a time sheet putting it in mins and the person collating the time sheet information is entering it as decimal.

You would like to think who ever payroll notices this sort of thing, but I quite believe that its overlooked and done incorrectly.

patman99

You need to speak to payroll about this. Gather all your payslips and work-out how many weeks this has occurred.
At the end of the day, this takes you below NMW, so the employer will be breaking the law because of one persons error.

I work for an agency & they work to decimal hours. These are a nightmare to calculated so I have a spreadsheet to calculate my hours if they vary.

indie_kid_2

Yes, paid by the clock. The system records clocking in/out times and this is data is used by payroll to do the wages. There's no timesheets or anything like that.

patman99 wrote: »

At the end of the day, this takes you below NMW, so the employer will be breaking the law because of one persons error.

This is the thing I really wanted to check on tbh, the legality of it all, so that I know where I stand on the issue. It does takes me a smidge below NMW. But does min wage apply, in this case, when it's only a part of an hour in question, and not the full hour?

Thanks so much for your help

LittleVoice

indie_kid wrote: »

Yes, paid by the clock. The system records clocking in/out times and this is data is used by payroll to do the wages. There's no timesheets or anything like that.



This is the thing I really wanted to check on tbh, the legality of it all, so that I know where I stand on the issue. It does takes me a smidge below NMW. But does min wage apply, in this case, when it's only a part of an hour in question, and not the full hour?

Thanks so much for your help

The National Minimum Wage is a rate (£x/hour) and therefore should be applied to part hours in proportion.

Savvy_Sue

indie_kid wrote: »

This is the thing I really wanted to check on tbh, the legality of it all, so that I know where I stand on the issue. It does takes me a smidge below NMW. But does min wage apply, in this case, when it's only a part of an hour in question, and not the full hour?

AIUI, NMW applies to part hours as well as full hours. And that therefore not paying you for the odd 14 minutes is also a breach of the NMW regs.

You could leave it to go quiet for a bit (so it's not obvious it's you) and report it to the body that deals with NMW.

Or you could raise a collective grievance, with others affected by this.

But before you go it alone, how long have you been there, and how much do you need the job? And are you in a union?

Savvy_Sue

BTW, I used to have a similar problem: a colleague (responsible for recording the hours worked and sending to me for payment) was SOMETIMES entering quarter and half hours as .15 and .30 and I didn't realise immediately. I had to trawl back through previous months to calculate the underpayments, which weren't much at the time but did add up.

LittleVoice

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

AIUI, NMW applies to part hours as well as full hours. And that therefore not paying you for the odd 14 minutes is also a breach of the NMW regs.

You could leave it to go quiet for a bit (so it's not obvious it's you) and report it to the body that deals with NMW.

Or you could raise a collective grievance, with others affected by this.

But before you go it alone, how long have you been there, and how much do you need the job? And are you in a union?

The only thing I would say about the 14 minutes situation is that if clocking in and out is a physical thing done away from the workstation rather than when logging on and off at a computer when beginning or finishing work, then the time taken in getting between the clocking point and the actual place of work in the building does not have to count. Thus it could be swings and roundabouts.

SAHD_Jim

LittleVoice wrote: »

The only thing I would say about the 14 minutes situation is that if clocking in and out is a physical thing done away from the workstation rather than when logging on and off at a computer when beginning or finishing work, then the time taken in getting between the clocking point and the actual place of work in the building does not have to count. Thus it could be swings and roundabouts.

That is a very reasonable position to take.


With regard to the original issue OP, you are being underpaid. As far as I can see, it is just because someone doesn't understand that 6h 15m equals 6.25h.

If your employer seems reasonable, I would simply enquire of someone in a decision making capacity (not necessarily the one who does the sums!) why you are being paid for 0.15 of an hour when you have worked 0.25. Speaking as a former manager, if this had been raised with me, I'd have immediately looked into it as it is clearly incorrect and also illegal as you are on NMW.

If your employer is not as reasonable, or if you are in a precarious employment position you may need to approach it more carefully as stated by someone previously.

indie_kid_2

Thanks everyone for the advice. It is a bit precarious, in that being on zero hours, if I start asking awkward questions, they could easily start saying 'oh it's gone really quiet, we don't need you in next week....or the week after...or the week after blah blah blah' and yeah, I really need the hours so I'm going to have a little think about the best way to proceed.

But I do feel better knowing exactly what the rules are now, so cheers

getmore4less

indie_kid wrote: »

The system pays in quarter hour increments; on the hour, quarter past, half past etc so if I clock out at 5:15 - get paid for the quarter hour; clock out 5:14 and I don't. Hope I've explained that ok.

Anyway, problem is - part hours in the same pay week will add up properly to a whole hour but anything over this isn't converted - they pay a quarter hour as 0.15, half an hour as 0.3 etc.

How much control do you have over work rate in the last 30mins-hour to stretch it out so you are always in the 5min after the clock cycle.

Once you get that bit sorted it is then trying to make sure they add up to a full hour.

for a 5 day week the potential loss is 14mins*5 +(0.75-0.45 * 60) so 88mins