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National minimum wage claims TWO NEWSPAPER delivery men employed by Midcounties Co-op, which is Britain’s biggest independent co-op with a turnover of more than £1.2 billion last year, have received back pay for underpayment of the national minimum wage. Rodney Sharpe, age 64, was underpaid by more than £14,000 over four years. Roger Lilley, age 66 will receive more than £4,000. Midcounties Co-op is asking workers who used to deliver papers and magazines from its network of 234 stores to come forward as they may also have been underpaid the national minimum wage. Two hundred of the five hundred newspaper delivery workers it employs are aged over sixteen. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) had pursued the complaints of the two newspaper deliverymen about what they were being paid by the UK’s largest independent co-op. The company has agreed to pay Mr Lilley, who claimed he earned as little as 69p per hour on some days, £1,935 in backdated car expenses and £1,853 to cover wages on days he worked but were marked as holiday. HM Revenue & Customs ordered the company to pay him £144 to compensate for five months when he was paid below the minimum wage. The chief executive of Midcounties Co-op, Ben Reid, said: “We would like to apologise to any past or present colleagues affected. The issue that Mr Sharpe and Mr Lilley raised with us was as a result of the way we previously structured this function of our retail operation and pre-dates our move to central payroll and hourly rates for delivery colleagues.” (Source: The Guardian (http://bit.ly/2dutMMy))
Gender pay divide THE INTERNATIONAL Inequalities Institute (III), based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, has recently published the paper Top income and the gender divide (http://bit.ly/2d0oDKg). The III investigated the gender divide at the top of the income
distribution using tax record data for a sample of eight countries with individual taxation – which included the United Kingdom (UK) – and reveal that women are under-represented at the top of the distribution. Though women account for between a fifth and a third of those in the top ten per cent, higher up the income distribution the proportion is lower, with women constituting between 14 and 22 per cent of the top one per cent. A striking feature, which was unexpected, is the relative similarity of the proportions in different countries. Another striking feature, which was expected, is the decline in the proportion of women as one rises higher on the income scale; this is particularly strong in Denmark, as well as Italy and the UK.
Disability a barrier to career progression A STUDY commissioned by PMI Health Group, part of Willis Towers Watson, discloses: ● more than a third (37%) of UK workers believe disability is a barrier to career progression, despite anti-discrimination legislation, and ● nearly one in five (17%) also claimed employers fail to make adequate provisions to accommodate their, or their colleagues’, disabilities. The research was conducted among 1,197 adults, aged 18–64, who are currently in full- or part-time employment in Great Britain.
Mike Blake, director at PMI Health Group, said: “Companies have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments, where necessary, to ensure employees with disabilities are not disadvantaged in the workplace. In light of these findings, it would be advisable for businesses to ensure they are not falling foul of this legislation. “Health and wellbeing initiatives, including the services available through group income protection and Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs), can help in establishing a more disability-friendly workplace so companies can attract and retain skilled staff from this important demographic.” The government has set a target of halving the disability employment gap – the difference in employment rates between disabled and non-disabled people – which stands at 33%. This is currently the subject of a parliamentary inquiry.
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Issue 25 | November 2016
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
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