Moy Park and Tayto must explain failing to pay workers legal minimum

The union Unite has called on two leading local firms to explain why they failed to pay members of their workforce minimum wage.

Responding to the news that Moy Park and Tayto were on a list of 179 UK businesses which had been fined over their failure to pay workers the minimum wage, Unite regional officer Sean McKeever said: “In the case of the 338 workers denied a total of more than £33,500 by Moy Park, we understand that they are on sites not represented by Unite.

“Despite this, we are demanding an urgent meeting with Janet McCollum, the chief executive to explain how this has arisen. This is a company which only recently reported £18 million in pre-tax profits – up 7% on the previous year – there can be no excuse.

“In regard to Tayto, owned by the Manderlay Group, this is another successful company reporting gross profits of £44m in 2016 and net profits of £3.3m again rising steadily. While 50 of their workers were denied the bare legal minimum – total pay to corporate directors for the year was a whopping £2.2m.”

He said it was now beholden on the Hutchinson family, which established Tayto and owns a large stake in Manderley, to account for its failure to address poverty pay.

“In both cases, Unite is calling on the companies to address this issue for once and all by committing to become a fully-accredited Living Wage employer. That means instead of failing to pay workers a bare minimum of £7.50 (£7.83 from April) – that would mean they would pay all their workers at least £8.75 an hour”, Mr McKeever said.