A large employer has been fined £5,000 by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and ordered to repay over £30,000 in wages to 40 workers who were underpaid, in a stark reminder to employers to beware of making deductions from wages for a benefit that takes pay below the national minimum wage.
In this test case, the employment tribunal found that an NHS trust had unlawfully amended its pay progression policy to provide that staff would be denied a pay rise if their sickness absence reached a certain level.
The employer in this case fell into the trap of assuming that, as long as it waited for a while (one year in this case) after a TUPE transfer, it could detrimentally alter the contractual benefits of employees who had transferred, in a bid to harmonise its workforce's terms and conditions.