WHSmith, M&S and Argos ordered to pay underpaid staff

WHSmith, M&S and Argos have been ordered to pay unpaid wages to thousands of staff following an investigation from the Department for Business and Trade (DBT).

WHSmith have been ordered to pay over £1m to over 17,000 workers after a policy making staff supply their own uniform caused their wages to drop under the national minimum.

A WHSmith spokesperson told Retail Sector that the underpayment was a “genuine error” and workers had been reimbursed in 2019.

Meanwhile, M&S will have to pay over £500,000 to over 5000 workers and Argos, now owned by Sainsbury’s will have to pay over £480,000 to just over 10,000 workers.

Both M&S and Argos have stated that the reason they are included in this report is due to a technical payroll error.

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “Back in 2018, a payroll error was identified which affected some Argos store colleagues and drivers and dated back to 2012 – before Sainsbury’s acquisition of Argos. We launched an immediate investigation, working alongside HMRC, and put this right at the time.

“Since then we have completed the integration of Argos onto Sainsbury’s systems which will prevent this from happening again. Since acquiring Argos, we have made significant investment into colleague pay and the Argos colleague hourly rate is now aligned with Sainsbury’s, representing an average increase of 53% over the last 7 years.”

M&S said in a statement: “Like many other organisations, M&S is only named in the NMW list because of an unintentional technical issue from over four years ago. This happened simply because temporary colleagues were not paid within the strict time periods specified in the NMW Regulations and was remedied as soon as we became aware of the issue.

“Our minimum hourly pay has never been below the national minimum wage, it is currently above it and no colleagues were ever underpaid because of this.”

These three retailers join over 200 businesses in being named in the DBT report which investigated claims of staff being paid less than the national minimum wage between 2017 and 2019.

The businesses named range from huge retailers like the three mentioned all the way down to small businesses and sole traders.