- Changes this month include: tips - it's now illegal to use tips to 'top up' wages to meet the minimum wage
- The minimum wage itself is rising
- Statutory redundancy pay is going up from £350 to £380 per week
- The Supreme Court replaces the House of Lords
There are only a few pieces of employment legislation coming into force on 1 October this year. These are summarised below.
1. National minimum wage: Tips
The effect of tips (and other gratuities), when calculating the minimum wage, will change on 1 October. This change in the law has arisen as a result of what has been widely viewed as sharp practice within the catering and entertainment industry.
Before the National Minimum Wage Regulations 1999 came into force, case law had determined that only tips paid by cheque or credit card and then distributed by the employer, counted as remuneration. Regulation 30(a) of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 1999 states that remuneration for the purposes of calculating the minimum wage included 'all money payments paid by the employer to the worker …'. DTI guidance notes (issued with the Regulations) interpreted this as meaning that tips paid through payroll are included in calculating the minimum wage (i.e. also including tips paid by cash).