The business minister Jo Swinson has fined 37 employers for failing to pay employees the minimum wage. As well as fines totalling £51,000, the companies must also pay workers the £177,000 they owe in back pay.
Firms include Welcome Break, which blamed a new IT problem and retailer H&M which said time logging errors were the cause of the mistake.
The 37 companies are the latest to be named and shamed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills since new, strict enforcement procedures came into force in October 2013.
In a statement, H&M said: “H&M employs over 9,500 people in the United Kingdom.Unfortunately due to errors within some of our stores concerning time logging, 540 employees were accidentally underpaid the national minimum wage. The average underpayment for those affected was £4.82. All such arrears were immediately processed and we accept that the errors should not have occurred.
"HMRC have confirmed that they were happy with H&M's complete transparency cooperation and full engagement with the process."
