Paid below the National Minimum Wage!

[Martin Walsh]

These payments have nothing to do with seasonal variations and do not cover new entrants only old contracts.

To be clear both old and new contracts are on above the £12.71 national minimum wage if it was either based on a 37 hour or 40 hour contract.

However the minimum wage law is based on the criteria of what is left of your basic pay after salary sacrifice divided by the hours you have worked for each week ( not including overtime, supplement or allowances). If you are above £12.71 then you receive no payment if you are below £12.71 then you would be topped us so you at least were in receipt of the minimum wage.

Royal Mail decided to go back to April 2025 to ensure no individual was below the current or previous minimum wage.

Royal Mail are doing this to ensure at a time that they are campaigning for a level playing field against most of the competitors self bogus employed model that they are not cited by the HMRC for breaching the national minimum wage law.

Royal Mail are going to in the future fund additional monies to those on Wallingtons or other unusual attendance patterns unless the Government allows them to balance the hours over a longer period than a week for weekly employed or month for monthly employed.

The range of payments are based on an individual’s pay after salary sacrifice and Royal Mail have looked back each week to see if they fell below the minimum wage in any week. Annual leave , sick leave and special leave will come into the equation.

The top payment was for to an individual on a 2 week on and 4 weeks off rota. The average payment was £550.

In the future only those currently on Wallingtons will be able to retain them and only if they choose the 2 in 5 banked option.


The union was informed of this but is a decision that the company made to ensure that they were not in breach of the law due to a combination of salary sacrifice or working longer hours in certain weeks to get a week or weeks off.

[TopperGas]

So have RM been content to pay it's employees below the NMW for years but now that they are concerned about any bad publicity whilst they are trying to get other delivery companies to play fair, they have now decided to pay them the NMW?

Why aren't the CWU seeking to get back payments for all the years it's members have been seemingly underpaid?

[Perseus]

i'm confused as to why RM are willing to continue to fund the payments going forward rather than just can the Wally Weeks.

[ted_e_bear]

i'm confused as to why RM are willing to continue to fund the payments going forward rather than just can the Wally Weeks.

I thought that too

[DGH]

RM have not been paying below the minimum wage. It is a technicality because of the way HMRC calculates things. It has only caused an issue this year because our pay has sunk parlously close to the national minimum wage.

Nobody has lost out. But many of those on rest weeks have gained free money because of the period over which national minimum wage is calculated (the calculation does not take into account they are paid for an entire week in which they are not at work. This is very silly, but it is what it is).

[DGH]

i'm confused as to why RM are willing to continue to fund the payments going forward rather than just can the Wally Weeks.

I'm certain that they would if they felt they could do that easily.

[Martin Walsh]

Because you are not under the national minimum wage old contracts are on £14:56 and new contracts are on £13.07.

The minimum wage is £12.71.

The issue is that when an individual under the law has say 6% pension contributions, 1% pension booster ,or other salary sacrifice payments which reduce their pay before tax and national insurance are deducted and then work an attendance pattern which means they don’t 37 hours per week but 45 hours and some more than the law means they could be under the national minimum wage.

Our pay rise cost over £170 million pounds for 3% which will be an ongoing cost for future years. Royal Mail made £5 million pounds profit on a £9 billion turnover. They are forecasted to lost over £200 million this year even with USO deployment.

Do you really think that you would be better off without a union at this point ? Unless the government agree to a level playing field including a single status worker then there will not be a Royal Mail as we see it in 3 to 5 years.

[ted_e_bear]

So have RM been content to pay it's employees below the NMW for years but now that they are concerned about any bad publicity whilst they are trying to get other delivery companies to play fair, they have now decided to pay them the NMW?

Why aren't the CWU seeking to get back payments for all the years it's members have been seemingly underpaid?

Because they haven't really paid less than the nmw,for example in the case of wallingtons they haven't been able to abide by the criteria as explained in the comment above yours from Martin Walsh

"Royal Mail are going to in the future fund additional monies to those on Wallingtons or other unusual attendance patterns unless the Government allows them to balance the hours over a longer period than a week for weekly employed or month for monthly employed"

Obviously on a Wallington when on the week off you get paid a regular weeks wage but you don't have to attend work.

[Martin Walsh]

Wallingtons have been kept because of the union. Royal Mail wanted to cease any Wallington or banked duty because of the extra cost due to the national minimum wage.

[Perseus]

Wallingtons have been kept because of the union. Royal Mail wanted to cease any Wallington or banked duty because of the extra cost due to the national minimum wage.

And RM are willing to pay the 9000 x £550 as long as they need to? That's just under £5,000,000 per year.

[Martin Walsh]

Your calculation is on the conservative side. Remember the 2 in 5 banked means for 4 weeks you are working 48 hours not 45 under the standard Wallington.

Royal Mail agreed to maintain Wallington as the CWU would not agree to USO reform as it was one of a few red lines for us. So they factored into the agreement additional costs for Wallingtons and banked duties.

[Perseus]

I'm just going with the details provided, circa 9000 people at an average of £550. Wally weeks must be really important to some, but for others they couldn't imagine anything worse than working 6 days straight, even before the intensity of DM26.

[moonjaguar]

I'm on 30 hours Wallington week. I earned about £20 a week below min wage every week but got no extra payment this week. Is it just this week the payments are happening?

[Hitcher]

I'm assuming I got arrears of a couple of hundred pounds because I was:

• paying the extra 1% into my pension

• £25 into my AVC

• working a 9 day fortnight

• on a 30 hours contract

Then the weeks I only worked 4 days would bring me below NMW.

EDIT: This might also explain why RM are pushing so hard for 2 in 5 rotates.

[HauntedNerd]

It's to do with mistake from HMRC over working time in lieu to get your rota week off. They think that those extra hours take you below minimum wage, despite the fact that all full timers (regardless of rota) are actually all doing 37 hours a week. There was no under payment.

Basically everyone who got a pay out has been given free money from Royal Mail. In our office it ranges from a couple of hundred to around £4000. If you did more overtime, you got less money.

Everyone should have gotten the same amount as we are all on the same hourly rate (part time shifts should get something pro-rata). It's created an imbalance amongst the staff and we should be joining together to ensure that all full-timers (regardless of shift structure) get the same amount as the highest paid out person who got this money.

Not quite.

It's not a mistake, but it is related to rota weeks off. Rota workers work an AVERAGE of 37hrs per week (or however many hours their contract is), but work longer hours on each of the weeks their week off doesn't fall in, so they're working more hours than paid. HMRC doesn't care for averages, the regulations are written in a way that each week has to be looked at independent of the other weeks, therefore according to HMRC rota workers are being paid fewer hours than worked in five of their six rotation weeks, and if the stars align correctly that can take them below nmw.

Everyone should absolutely NOT get the same amount. It's a payment to ensure compliance, nothing more, nothing less.

But they work those hours to get the week off, so over the course of doing a 1 in 4 or 1 in 6 rota week, they work the same amount of hours as someone on a day off rota, on the same basic wage, so there is no difference. Compliance payment or not, the person on the frame next to you got paid a couple of grand for doing the same thing you do, but on a different rota structure. There is an imbalance, and it's not fair that week off staff are getting more than you, just to comply with HMRCs view of time in lieu working