The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has decided that weekly deductions for the purpose of buying a season ticket to football matches, which was voluntary on the part of the employee, did reduce pay for national minimum wage (NMW) purposes.
The EAT stated that the arrangements in this case were clearly deductions, not payments, and that there was no scope to argue that something that would normally be construed as a deduction was actually a payment.
The EAT also decided that, while workers can consent to deductions from pay, they cannot opt out of, or vary the applicability of the NMW Regulations.
