Tesco is to reimburse 140,000 current and former employees a total of £9.7m after an internal review of its reward systems found some had not been paid the National Living Wage (NLW), due to errors in the way in which benefits in kind had been accounted for
Most workers are expected to receive up to £40.
The supermarket chain said its review, which was conducted during the implementation of a new payroll system, found the voluntary contributions made by some employees to benefits such as pensions, childcare vouchers and cycle to work schemes, led to errors that resulted in their pay after salary sacrifice not reaching NLW levels.
Tesco has checked the pay of all 320,000 of its UK workers for the last six years and is in the process of contacting those affected. The retailer says they all receive their reimbursement payments by the end of March, while it will also be contacting former employees to arrange payments too.
Matt Davies, UK and ROI CEO at Tesco said: ‘As soon as our own review identified this issue we took immediate action to resolve it and establish which colleagues are affected.
‘We’ve apologised to our colleagues and our priority now is to talk to them about how this affects them individually, and make any necessary payments.’
Tesco said it has informed HMRC and has also briefed USDAW, the union which represents shopfloor workers.
