Employment law round-up: Changes in October

  • 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).

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Editor's Welcome

 

Hello! I'm a great believer in the power of stories, whether they be folk tales, novels, films or TV dramas.
 
They have a wonderful ability to get complex moral or social issues over to us in a palatable, easy-to-understand way and can provide many lessons if only we care to look just a little bit below the surface.
 
But they can also act as a fun starting point for discussion and debate on rather more serious topics that are all too often brushed under the carpet and ignored.
 

Hence our decision to start up a Review slot on the site to look at those everyday stories that are all around us from an HR perspective.

Although we've been publishing book reviews (take a look at our Book Club list of suggested possible non-fiction works for evaluation here) for some time, you may also have noticed that we've been running a weekly home page blog on The Apprentice courtesy of The Chemistry Group for a while now.

And Pauline Wood, managing director at specialist retail headhunter, court & spark consulting, was likewise kind enough to write our first film review on the Headhunters movie.

But the big question is, why don't you give it a go yourself? There's a world of choice out there and I, like the rest of the community, would love to hear your thoughts and insights.

So next time you watch a movie, see a TV drama or read a novel that you think has an HR message worth sharing, send your review to me at cath.everett@siftmedia.co.uk or post it directly to our blogs section at www.hrzone.co.uk/blogs.

So get critiquing and look forward to hearing from you very soon.....

Cath Everett
HRZone Editor 
 
 
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