Page 48 - Workplace Relations Guide to Employment Law

the employee, as detailed in the Table over.
(ii) apprentices within the meaning The statutory minimum hourly rates of pay are
of or under the Industrial Training gross amounts i.e. before tax/PRSI is deducted.
Act 1967 or the Labour Services
Act 1987 including an apprentice
printer, bricklayer, mechanic, plumber,
carpenter/joiner and electrician, or Working Hours
(iii) any non-commercial work The working hours of an employee for the
undertaken by prisoners. purposes of the Acts include any overtime
hours worked in the pay reference period,
any time spent on standby in the workplace,
Minimum Hourly Rates of Pay and any training time during normal working
hours. Working hours for the purposes of the
Act do not include the time that an employee
The National Minimum Wage Acts 2000 is absent from work on annual leave, sick
and 2015 provide that an experienced adult leave, protective leave, adoptive leave,
worker must be paid an average hourly rate parental leave, while laid-off, on strike or time
of pay that is not less than the national for which an employee is paid in lieu of notice.
minimum wage in a pay reference period.
A pay reference period may be a week, a
fortnight or no longer than a month. For the Reckonable and Non-Reckonable
purposes of the Acts, an experienced adult
worker is an employee who is not: Pay

(i) under age 18, or Reckonable pay means those payments
or benefits in kind that are allowable in
(ii) in the first two years after the date of calculating the average hourly rate of pay
first employment over age 18, or of an employee, in order to determine if the
(iii) a trainee undergoing a course that employee has been paid his/her minimum
satisfies the conditions which are set hourly rate of pay entitlement under the
out in S.I. No. 99 of 2000. Act. Information on reckonable and non-
reckonable pay components is contained in
the Detailed Guide to the National Minimum
The table over illustrates the circumstances Wage Acts, which may be downloaded from
where an employer may pay a lower rate than www.workplacerelations.ie or obtained
the national minimum wage rate shown above. from the Workplace Relations Commission
(T: 1890 80 80 90).

Determining the average hourly
rate of pay Training / Study Criteria
The criteria that a course of training or study
The gross reckonable pay earned by an must satisfy for the purposes of the Act, in
employee in a pay reference period is divided order for an employer to pay an employee
by the employee’s working hours in that pay the trainee rates, are set out in the Detailed
reference period. The average hourly rate Guide to the National Minimum Wage Acts. An
of pay obtained must be not less than the employer, even if an employee changes his/
minimum hourly rate of pay entitlement of her job, cannot pay an employee the trainee

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