John Lewis, McColl’s, One Stop named as top three employers that paid less than minimum wage

The government today (5 August) named a total of 191 companies for previously underpaying workers, including major household names.

John Lewis, convenience retailers McColl’s and One Stop are the top three companies named in the list.

John Lewis Partnership, which operates John Lewis department stores and Waitrose supermarkets, failed to pay £941,355 to 19392 workers, Martin McColl Retail Limited, £258,047 to 4366 workers and One Stop Stores Limited, £56505.04 to 2631 workers.

Overall, a total of £2.1 million was found to be owed to over 34,000 workers by the 191 named companies, following investigations by HMRC.

The breaches took place between 2011 and 2018, and the government said the named employers have since been made to pay back what they owed, and were fined an additional £3.2 million.

“Our minimum wage laws are there to ensure a fair day’s work gets a fair day’s pay – it is unacceptable for any company to come up short,” Business Minister Paul Scully said.

“All employers, including those on this list, need to pay workers properly. This government will continue to protect workers’ rights vigilantly, and employers that short-change workers won’t get off lightly.”

John Lewis Partnership said they are “surprised and disappointed” that the government has chosen to report this today.

“This was a technical breach that happened four years ago, has been fixed and which we ourselves made public at the time,” a spokesperson said. “The issue arose because the Partnership smooths pay so that Partners with variable pay get the same amount each month, helping them to budget.”

The business added that their average minimum hourly pay has never been below the national minimum wage and is currently 15 per cent above it.

A McColl’s spokesperson said the issue related to colleague time and attendance recording processes that were in place from 2015 to 2018, adding that the business took it “very seriously” as a responsible employer.

“After becoming aware of the matter in early 2018, we took immediate action to apologise to and reimburse affected colleagues. We also put in place robust measures for recording working time into our stores to ensure it does not happen again,” the spokesperson said.

One Stop has reached out for comment, but not yet responded as of publishing this article.

Among the employers named today, nearly half (47%) wrongly deducted pay from workers’ wages, including for uniform and expenses and 30 per cent failed to pay workers for all the time they had worked, such as when they worked overtime. Almost one in five (19%) companies paid the incorrect apprenticeship rate.

As a significant number of the minimum wage breaches identified today affected those on apprenticeships, the government has published new guidance to ensure employers know exactly what they need to do to pay their apprentices, and all workers, correctly.