
Good for them
As an employer I welcome this. I'm sick of trying to compete with businesses that don't pay at least the minimum wage and just seem to get away with it.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is to name and shame businesses which fail to pay the minimum wage. Employers have three months to get their houses in order. From 1 January 2011 the Department will make public the names of firms which fail to meet minimum requirements. HMRC and BIS today published their …
I'm glad to hear an employer in agreement. I've never understood why 'the big boys' and the Tories were so opposed to the minimum wage because it basically meant that the country (through benefits to under paid employees) was subsidising badly run/unprofitable businesses and unscrupulous bosses.
They (or the last lot at leased) fear big buisness to much. They say that it is because younger people are "in training", like any minium wage job needs more than 10 mins.
The same thing with the working time directive. They won't sign up to it because companys want to work people to death, but say "people don't have to work long hours" and "some people want to" without taking any notice of the fact that most people are forced to opt out and we have all sorts of problems with the long hours that need to be worked in the UK for you to be seen as a "good" worker.
The law stipulates a minimum payment - likely totally inadequate for basic living and these OFFENDERS are going to be SHAMED into paying.
Do the right thing, charge and fine them then have the court award the missing payments + interest in the sentencing and hold the company officers responsible personally.
for the area its paid. It costs loads more to live in London, than say Middlesbrough, because of rents and so on.
<rant>Remember when the topic was first broached.... all the CBI types moaned like the clappers & claimed they'd all go out of business. They didn't. anyway, if you can't run a business & pay your employees a living wage then you go out of business, simple as that. It might not be a fashionable view, but that doesn't make it any less true that the profits taken by the owners of a business are what's left of the value the employees have created once they've been paid. They deserve nearly all this - managers should only be paid in relation to the amount of surplus value they have created. I imagine that this would be a small sum if it were in line with reality - how much profit does your boss generate for the business - not much would be my guess.</rant>
...what the minimum wage is actually for except as a social feel-good measure?
Do employers actually hold a monopoly so that they manage to avoid their employees drifting off to higher-paying jobs?
Now, if those employees were illegals, or unable to read the job offer pages or if they were actually doing a job that generates rock-bottom additional value (below the minimum wage), I would have an explanation. But otherwise??
Note that minimum wage legislation kills off those rock-bottom additional value jobs, in other words some things you have to yourself, or hire students at 0/hour.
I don't see why the whole country should subsidise (through benefits to underpaid employees) jobs that don't add sufficient value to be profitable in themselves. If these jobs are killed off either they the job is no longer required, people will do it for themselves or the perceived value will rise to the point where a 'proper' wag can be paid.
I particularly object to (unscrupulous?) bosses making a profit on the subsidy that the rest of us are paying for - as other posters have noted.
BIS - I thought "what's Blackberry Internet Service" got to do with scrooge bosses ?
As others have said, it's been law for years now. How come anybody gets away with it ? Is it because low paid workers are too afraid of losing their jobs if reports are made ?
Is it because low paid workers are also claiming benefits and thus scared for themselves ?