Working below minimum wage

Tribal_Tiger

Hi,

My wife is currently having a problem with her employer. She is on a contract to work 3 days a week. Her contract is for 30 hours a week, 3 hours of which are taken off for breaks, so it works out at 27 hours a week. The trouble is that she is made to do more hours than she should according to her contract. She will always work at least 33.5 hours in a week, normally more. The extra hours that she does actually means she is getting paid less than minimum wage.

She is part of a share bonus scheme, part of which she must sign an agreement saying she will take part in stock takes, which will require extra hours, but they use this agreement to say she must work any extra hours, be it a stock take or not.

Is there anything we can do to make sure she at least get minimum wage for her work?

patman99

Is your wife the only one who is being made to do this ?.
If not, and if she can trust them, she should speak to her co-workers to see if they are being treated the same.

How long has your wife worked for the firm ?. I only ask as if they get wind of what she is up to and she has been there less than 2 years, they might find a reason to get shot of her.

If her wage slips show her working hours as being higher than those she is contracted to work, then she could bypass ACAS and give HMRC an anonymous tip-off that they should be looking more closely at the firm as it is under-paying it's workers.

Just bare in mind though that should it get as far as HMRC being involved, they will add the firm to their list of firms that under-pay their staff and as this is available to anyone who wants to view it, her boss could always end up in the local paper.

Tribal_Tiger

She has been with the company a good number of years now.

She works for a large national retailer who are almost famous for the way they treat staff and their love of zero hour contracts.

There are very few salaried staff. All of the other staff on a contract are on a higher rate, so don't get caught out by this problem. All the other staff are paid hourly from when they clock in to when the clock out, so get paid for what they work.

This is mainly a issue that she dropped down to 3 days a week after coming back from maternity leave. She used to be a supervisor, but as she went part time when she returned they said she couldn't be a supervisor and only work part time. It ended up she stayed on a salary, but it was cut down to 30 hours a week.

Tribal_Tiger

All salaried staff were called in early last week, and they were told they would get the hours back the following week. She has now checked the rota and all other salaried staff have less hours, making it right, but she has another week with more hours than she is contracted to do.

On each weeks rota, it will show her finishing earlier, but she is always told she has to stay later. She has been told that it just shows this time for the head count. The rota looks like it would work out correctly, but she can get the records of her actual times she clocks in and out to show real hours worked. (They have to clock in with their own code and their fingerprint so there can be no real denying it was her clocking in and out)

agrinnall

Rather than just meekly accepting what she's told why doesn't she simply leave at the time she has completed her contracted hours? She's making herself complicit by continuing to work extra hours. Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself for anyone to take any notice.