Minimum wage topped up with bonus?

L121254

Hi,so a question I have is if I normally get paid minimum wage but earn bonus then does my employer not have to give me an increase in pay? Basically this month my basic pay has not shown any increase because I earned a bonus of x amount which they say takes me to above the new minimum wage so they don’t have to pay me extra. If I hadn’t earned bonus they would top me up to the new minimum wage. Is this right?

LinLui

Assuming this is not an annual bonus, bonuses, pay incentives and commission all count towards the minimum wage, so it appears your employer is correct.

TELLIT01

What the employer is doing may be legal, but it doesn't provide much incentive for the employee to work towards bonus payments unless those bonus payments are substantial.

housebuyer143

L121254 said:

Hi,so a question I have is if I normally get paid minimum wage but earn bonus then does my employer not have to give me an increase in pay? Basically this month my basic pay has not shown any increase because I earned a bonus of x amount which they say takes me to above the new minimum wage so they don’t have to pay me extra. If I hadn’t earned bonus they would top me up to the new minimum wage. Is this right?

Yeah, my old employer did this to the sales staff. While it's legal it's kind of disgusting behaviour in my opinion. A bonus should be an incentive. If you did nothing they would increase your base pay to meet minimum wage, but if you work harder you might also just get minimum wage 🤷‍♂️

Andy_L

Are you on some sort of basic salary plus commission system where the basic is below NMW & you are expected to achieve a certain level of omission to get to NMW as basic performance?

Sam2030

Similar situation at my work we receive salary plus bonus so just before the new minimum wage came in they said they were changing the bonus to make it more fair so now our wage has gone up to the new minimum wage rate of course no bonus this month but still being told we need this amount to get bonus blah blah. Also we did meet the target it's just becomes a joke really not a penny over minimum wage x

penners324

Time to update the CV

DullGreyGuy

It's certainly legal, if it's time to update the CV really depends on what the commissions/bonuses are like and how easy it is to earn them/how variable they are. There are those in the sales world that earn good money but are on NMW or less on a basic. 

Contractor recruitment agents typically get about 30% of the agencies fee which for the sorts of people I hire would equate to circa £50/day for the agent themselves. Get 10 people into clients and your commissions are not too bad at all and would make up for below NMW on the base salary as long as you are good at matching candidates to clients needs.