Apparently there are grossly exploitative employers with the temerity to pay people less than the legal minimum wage:

Tesco was Britain’s worst minimum wage offender as the business department identified a raft companies that failed to pay staff in full.

The supermarket chain was among 139 firms, including Pizza Hut, Costco and Wigan Warriors, the rugby league club, named and shamed by the Government.

The companies were investigated between 2016 and 2018 and they failed to pay £6.7m to more than 95,000 employees at the time.

If we take 95,000 employees each working a 1,750 hour year (not quite right but we’ve got to make some assumption) that £6.7 million comes out to underpayment of two pence per hour.

We take it that this is indeed evidence of the gross exploitation of the workers by capitalism? Worthy of a press release and the full power of HMRC to deal with?

Or perhaps we don’t. This is not an actual exemplar, just an example of the sort of thing being argued about here. If the boss says that you must wash your hands before starting work then that time spent washing hands is a requirement of the job - and should therefore that time should be paid for. Again, that’s not an exact description but that is the sort of thing that is being complained about here.

Over those two years total incomes in the UK were some £4 trillion - that’s easy as total incomes are, by definition, the same as the annual GDP of about £2 trillion. That is, 0.00017% underpayment when taken over all incomes. We think that can usefully be described as a rounding error.

Of course, neither Tesco nor any other of those named were in fact the worst at underpaying the minimum wage. They were, at worst, the cases caught. And it’s worth noting that they’re all entirely legitimate businesses operating in the full sight of the law. The people we think who might be really violating pay rates are odd backstreet factories in Leicester, farm workers perched in caravans far from anywhere. There’s not much trumpeting about successes on those fronts. Presumably because there wasn’t much success to trump about.

Isn’t that a surprise? A vast state bureaucracy concentrates upon the trivial offences of the largely law abiding and ignores the scofflaws. Really, who would have thought such a thing could happen?

With that thought about the success of an overweening state we wish you the very best for the New Year.