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To: UK Parliament

Punish minimum wage cheating companies

Name, shame and punish companies that pay below the National Minimum Wage.

Prosecutions for National Minimum Wage offences must become a higher priority. The maximum fine offences should be increased from £5,000 to £75,000 and sentencing guidelines should reflect the seriousness of these offences.

The government should continue to increase funding for enforcement of the National Minimum Wage, so every worker can be paid legally.

The Government must end the moratorium on naming and shaming employers caught underpaying.

Why is this important?

Every worker deserves fair pay and a secure job. But wage theft is widespread and pushing working people into poverty.

Until March 2018, the Government was publishing minimum wage cheats quarterly but has since stopped reporting. And there are already fines when an offence is committed, that could easily be increased.

If the Government is serious about the National Minimum Wage, it must do more to enforce it.

A new report has found up to 439,000 people were paid less than their legal entitlement in April 2018, equivalent to 23 per cent of all minimum wage workers.

And 135,000 people were still paid less than £7.20 an hour, the level at which the National Living Wage had been set in 2016.

The Government must do more to tackle wage theft, by naming, shaming and punishing companies that break the rules.

Updates

2019-05-11 20:52:22 +0100

100 signatures reached