Is this legal please?

unholyangel

What did your employer offer to pay you at the time you agreed to be furloughed? Was it linked to what they can reclaim under CJRS? 

7Phil

Jeremy535897 said:

You may be right that it is an error by omission rather than commission, but I still think they are on very dodgy ground. The employees should have to agree to it as otherwise the repayment could be an unlawful deduction from wages. It may also be the case that some workers are still working, and they won't be able to take the increase away from them if that would breach NMW, which then looks wrong if it creates differential pay scales for no reason other than furlough.

Totally agree with the principle of what you are saying. I feel the honourable thing to say would be "hey, we made a mistake but we are letting you keep the extra money we paid you this month as a gesture of good will, next month your pay will be reduced to the correct amount while you are furloughed".

The working staff do need to be paid current NMW by law. The furloughed workers are already on a reduced/different pay scale anyway, so I guess the two situations are not comparable.

Jeremy535897

7Phil said:

Jeremy535897 said:

You may be right that it is an error by omission rather than commission, but I still think they are on very dodgy ground. The employees should have to agree to it as otherwise the repayment could be an unlawful deduction from wages. It may also be the case that some workers are still working, and they won't be able to take the increase away from them if that would breach NMW, which then looks wrong if it creates differential pay scales for no reason other than furlough.

Totally agree with the principle of what you are saying. I feel the honourable thing to say would be "hey, we made a mistake but we are letting you keep the extra money we paid you this month as a gesture of good will, next month your pay will be reduced to the correct amount while you are furloughed".

The working staff do need to be paid current NMW by law. The furloughed workers are already on a reduced/different pay scale anyway, so I guess the two situations are not comparable.

Yes, this is a bit of a problem, isn't it? You might furlough half your staff and decide it's fair to furlough half for 3 weeks then the other half for three weeks. NMW forces a pay rise at 1 April. The logical approach is to live with the pay rise for everybody, otherwise you get into a complete mess.

7Phil

The wage for furlough calculation is still based on Feb 28 I believe (or was that changed to 19 March? - either way, it is before the NMW increase on 1 April).

• If you are working you get £8.72ph
• If you are furloughed you get 80% of your wage as of Feb 28.

Ignoring that businesses can choose to pay staff a higher rate then I think it's just as simple as those two lines above.

Jeremy535897

Last pay period prior to 20 March. Every time you furlough someone new you drop their pay to old National Minimum Wage. Messy.