Pizza Express, British Airways and Lidl named for failing to pay minimum wage to some staff
Pizza Express, Lidl, and British Airways have been named in a list of more than 500 employers that have failed to pay some of their staff the minimum wage.
The Department for Business and Trade found a total of nearly 60,000 people had been left out of pocket by the companies underpaying staff over several years.
Capita, one of the government’s biggest suppliers, was top of the list, owing £1.15m to 5,543 workers.
This meant individual employees were underpaid about £208 on average.
Capita said it was “inadvertent underpayments” between 2015 and 2021, due to some issues, including adding 25 minutes per week for call centre staff to log in for their shifts.
“All owed monies were paid immediately, and we are sorry for any impact this had on colleagues and former colleagues at that time,” it added.
Pizza Express failed to pay £760,702 to 8,470 workers – amounting to about £90 per person on average.
“Once we were made aware of this historic unintentional technicality, which occurred between 2012 and 2018, we swiftly identified who was impacted, apologised and rectified,” it said.
British Airways was named for failing to pay £231,276 to 2,165 workers.
“Back in 2017, an audit revealed we had accidentally slightly underpaid some of our cabin crew who joined us between 2014 and 2017 during their first two months of employment. We apologised and issued backdated payments several years ago,” the airline said.
Lidl was also high on the list, having owed £286,437 to 3,423 employees.
Money has contacted the supermarket for comment.
Earlier this week, our Money blog team explained what you can do if your employer has paid you less than minimum wage.
You can read more about that here…
