Equal pay, hourly rate and commission

[register]

An employer pays his workers by commission and also by hourly rate if the total commission that the worker receives is less than the minimum wage. This employer tries to justify that he pays a lower hourly rate to some workers doing the same work as other workers because the work they do is allegedly easier so the productivity is higher and as a consequence they receive higher commission. Do you think that he is right?

I would like to say that the workers who are paid a lower hourly rate are of a different nationality than those who are paid a higher hourly rate and as a consequence there could be race discrimination

[register]

It seems to me that the argument put forward by the employer is flawed because how can he offsets a different in hourly pay with an hypothetical commission which according to the performance of the worker could be paid or not. However there could be other reasons why this argument is flawed and I would like to have your opinion

[ULA]

Commission does counts towards the minimum wage.

The total pay including any commission earned must add up to at least the minimum wage for the hours worked in each pay period.

The employer must top up pay if not enough commission has been earned to equal the minimum wage.

[register]

Yes but I do not complain because my employer does not pay the minimum wage. I complain because my employer pays different hourly rates to workers of different nationalities even though they do the same work and because he uses the fact that he pay a commission to justify this difference in hourly rate, It seems to me that my employer is committing race discrimination and the justification he puts forward is not good

[ULA]

Equal pay is about ensuring that women and men receive the same pay and other contractual benefits when they are doing equal work. Is the inequality in hourly rates between male and female members of staff?

[register]

Gender is one of the protected characteristics among others. There are also race, age, disability,..etc
All the protected characteristics are concerned by the Equality Act 2010. Hence, equal pay is not only between men and women

The argument put forward by my employer seems strange also because the purpose of a commission is to encourage a worker to do his best to performance well and this purpose will be negated by paying him a lower hourly because he performs better than other workers. The employer will be taking from him with one hand what he would have given him with the other hand

[ULA]

I am aware of the protected characteristics under the Equality Act, however equal pay is the right for men and women to be paid the same when doing the same, or equivalent, work. It has been an aspect of UK sex discrimination law for over 40 years, and the law has been incorporated into the Equality Act. Except for certain very limited "piggy back" claims, pay inequality is a gender issue.

As you say commission schemes are traditionally used to encourage performance. However it is acceptable for an employer to have different commission schemes in place dependent on the job being carried out and it is also acceptable that there are different hourly rates for different types of jobs.

[register]

My case has nothing to do with equal pay between men and women because it is about equal pay between two groups of difference nationalities

It is the same commission scheme and the same work

[ULA]

I do appreciate the issue and I am not saying it is fair that there is a pay difference apparently based on nationality, however you cannot make this an equal pay issue.

What I suggest you could do is raise a grievance with your employer about the difference in hourly rates and commission scheme payments being based on nationality rather than significant variations in the job being performed, which would seem to be discriminatory and unfair to the group of affected employees.

[register]

In page 31 of the website

http://m.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/s/j/R...-workplace.pdf

I found the following

" It is possible for an employee to make a claim under the Equality Act that they are being paid less on the grounds of their protected characteristic of Race. For more on equal pay, see the companion guide, Equality and discrimination: understand the basics."

Both group are paid in the same way i.e.by commission which is topped up in case the amount of commission is less than the agreed hourly rate which is different for the two groups. This means that the group which is paid a lower hourly rate is less topped up than the group which is paid a higher hourly rate which seem to me very unfair and discriminatory

[register]

The employer says that one group is more efficient than the other group and as a consequence it is paid a lower hourly rate because it earns more commissions.
The fact that this group earns more commission means that members of this group need less often than the members of the other group to be topped up. However does this justify that one group is topped up to lower hourly rate and the other group to a higher hourly rate?

[ULA]

Are both groups doing the same job working on a paid on a commission only basis which is topped up if an individual performance rates does not earn a commission payment that equals the hourly minimum wage rate for the pay period?
Are the commission schemes of both groups the same?

[register]

Yes but their wages are topped not when their commissions reach the minimum wages but when they do not reach an agreed hourly rate which is different for the two groups which is why I am complaining. No one is only pay the minimum wage

I am thinking that what matters is that these adverts which says that people of a nationality are paid a lower hourly rate than people of other nationality has caused me injury of feelings irrespectively of how much really my employer pays anyone because only him knows