Employee entitlements

infamous

Hi

I have recently started a new venture and have two employees. I wish to ensure that they earn less than 18.5k so I have to pay less PRSI. I am paying an hourly rate of nine euros so I will put them on a 39 hour week. What are their break entitlements do I have to pay them for their 15 minute breaks. Only starting out and funds are tight so apologies for my scrooge like approach.

kenbrady

infamous wrote: »

Hi

I have recently started a new venture and have two employees. I wish to ensure that they earn less than 18.5k so I have to pay less PRSI. I am paying an hourly rate of nine euros so I will put them on a 39 hour week. What are their break entitlements do I have to pay them for their 15 minute breaks. Only starting out and funds are tight so apologies for my scrooge like approach.

you don't have to pay for breaks, some exceptions for certain retails sectors were they are entitled to a paid 15min break during the day

Bandara

infamous wrote: »

Hi

I have recently started a new venture and have two employees. I wish to ensure that they earn less than 18.5k so I have to pay less PRSI. I am paying an hourly rate of nine euros so I will put them on a 39 hour week. What are their break entitlements do I have to pay them for their 15 minute breaks. Only starting out and funds are tight so apologies for my scrooge like approach.

funds are irrelevant, you have to pay people the legal rate. Are you sure €9 a hour is correct for them? If they are experienced adults its highly possible it isn't.

Sorry, don't mean to be argumentative but I just really don't like your approach/thinking towards this, its a bad way to start out a business when your focus is avoiding PRSI costs.

Anyway most of the JLC rates are here:

http://www.labourcourt.ie/labour/labour.nsf/LookupPageLink/RatesOfPay

Rulmeq

Depends on your area of business.
http://www.labourcourt.ie/labour/labour.nsf/LookupPageLink/RatesOfPay

If one of the JLC agreements apply, then you must comply with that agreement (including paid breaks, paid sick leave where applicable)

Edit: Too slow

Also, I notice from an earlier post you made that it's retail
The rates of pay are here:
http://www.labourcourt.ie/Labour/Information.nsf/447a09a9deaa452280256a1b0052dc2e/42dace709bf1ef47802569e0004017ab?OpenDocument
€9.36 (€9.59 from Oct 2010) is the minimum wage for an experienced employee, so if your staff are over 18 with 2 years experience (and the experience doesn't have to be with you!) you are underpaying them.

The conditions of employment are here:
http://www.labourcourt.ie/Labour/Information.nsf/447a09a9deaa452280256a1b0052dc2e/42dace709bf1ef47802569e0004017ab/$FILE/Retail%20Grocery%20&%20Allied%20Trades%2025th%20October%202009.pdf
Some key points.
Your employees are entitled to a paid break of at least 15 minutes after every 4.5 hours (you can give them at the start of the work, but if they do 4.5 hours they get at least 15 minutes paid break)
They are also entitled to an unpaid break of 1 hour if they work more than 6 hours, and their hours include the hours from 11.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. in accordance with the provisions of S.I. 57/1998.
They are entitled to sick pay (after 3 days)

Also, you shouldn't really be fixated on the costs of employment, they are fully deductible from your tax bill. Pay your staff what they are due, give them their entitlements, and if you are unable to make a profit with the staff levels you have, then you shouldn't be in business - If it's a startup, is it possible for you to do more work, there is nothing stopping you from working 100+ hours per week.

Another Edit: You are also legally obliged to post the JLC documents in a place where your staff can see them

infamous

Hammertime my focus is not solely to avoid PRSI costs my focus is to keep my costs to a minimum and as wages/prsi will be a high percentage of my costs it is obviously an area I will concentrate on. I am not taking a wage myself and have put all my savings into this and will be living on very little for the next year or so, I treat my employees very well and they are both very gratefull to have jobs and they ofcourse understand at this early stages I have to keep costs to a minimum.

DubTony

Rulmeq wrote: »

Depends on your area of business.
http://www.labourcourt.ie/labour/labour.nsf/LookupPageLink/RatesOfPay

If one of the JLC agreements apply, then you must comply with that agreement (including paid breaks, paid sick leave where applicable)

Edit: Too slow

Also, I notice from an earlier post you made that it's retail
The rates of pay are here:
http://www.labourcourt.ie/Labour/Information.nsf/447a09a9deaa452280256a1b0052dc2e/42dace709bf1ef47802569e0004017ab?OpenDocument
€9.36 (€9.59 from Oct 2010) is the minimum wage for an experienced employee, so if your staff are over 18 with 2 years experience (and the experience doesn't have to be with you!) you are underpaying them.

The conditions of employment are here:
http://www.labourcourt.ie/Labour/Information.nsf/447a09a9deaa452280256a1b0052dc2e/42dace709bf1ef47802569e0004017ab/$FILE/Retail%20Grocery%20&%20Allied%20Trades%2025th%20October%202009.pdf
Some key points.
Your employees are entitled to a paid break of at least 15 minutes after every 4.5 hours (you can give them at the start of the work, but if they do 4.5 hours they get at least 15 minutes paid break)
They are also entitled to an unpaid break of 1 hour if they work more than 6 hours, and their hours include the hours from 11.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. in accordance with the provisions of S.I. 57/1998.
They are entitled to sick pay (after 3 days)

Also, you shouldn't really be fixated on the costs of employment, they are fully deductible from your tax bill. Pay your staff what they are due, give them their entitlements, and if you are unable to make a profit with the staff levels you have, then you shouldn't be in business - If it's a startup, is it possible for you to do more work, there is nothing stopping you from working 100+ hours per week.

Another Edit: You are also legally obliged to post the JLC documents in a place where your staff can see them

I feel the need to clarify here.

The JLC for grocery retail and allied trades stipulates that employees are entitled to sick pay if the person has been in your employ for 2 years.

professore

I would not base my financial projections in a retail business on paying staff as little as possible. Get good people and pay them as well as you can afford. If this is paying them the bare legal minimum then your business plan is all wrong. They will pay for themselves many times over in repeat business. However if they feel you are a tightwad they will leave at the first opportunity. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. And no, I am not some cushy civil servant, I run my own business.

stepbar

^^^^^^^

100% correct. Of course it depends on a few things namely what type of business you are running and if the staff are customer facing etc. Seriously if you're trying to skimp on something like PRSI then perhaps your business plan is not realistic.

infamous

Thanks everyone for their comments. I was under the impression that minimum wage was 8.65 and I started my employees at 9 euro as it was the requirements of the agency I got them from I will look further into this. As the girls were hovering around the prsi cut off I thought it made perfect business sense to keep them below it. I am very flexible with their working hours and days off etc they have realistic targets to hit everyday and once they hit them they can head off. The business is in its infancy and is expanding quite fast taking on two more employees in the coming weeks. My employees are very happy with the business and quite happy that they will be rewarded as the business grows for now I am trying to really control costs to keep cash flow under control as there was a large spend on start up costs.

Bandara

infamous wrote: »

Thanks everyone for their comments. I was under the impression that minimum wage was 8.65 and I started my employees at 9 euro as it was the requirements of the agency I got them from I will look further into this. As the girls were hovering around the prsi cut off I thought it made perfect business sense to keep them below it. I am very flexible with their working hours and days off etc they have realistic targets to hit everyday and once they hit them they can head off. The business is in its infancy and is expanding quite fast taking on two more employees in the coming weeks. My employees are very happy with the business and quite happy that they will be rewarded as the business grows for now I am trying to really control costs to keep cash flow under control as there was a large spend on start up costs.

whoaaa,

your doing this all wrong, you do not allow staff who are able to hit their targets to then go home (and as a result the business stops earning)

You pay them an agreed bonus/additional commission for everything they then hit above their pre-determined targets.

anything over 25% of Target = bonus %, above 50% bigger bonus %

Letting them go home is pure madness, your talking about keeping costs down while ignoring the easiest way to get profits up, and taking your comment into account about large start up costs then even more reason to get the turnover up into big figures asap !!!

You want these girls to be earning a grand a week and working 10 hours a day as they are driven to the goal of earning a big paycheck, you want to be paying them the higher rate of prsi as it means that they are earning big money = you are earning even more off their efforts !!!

gavney

Hammertime wrote: »

whoaaa,

your doing this all wrong, you do not allow staff who are able to hit their targets to then go home (and as a result the business stops earning)

You pay them an agreed bonus/additional commission for everything they then hit above their pre-determined targets.

anything over 25% of Target = bonus %, above 50% bigger bonus %

Letting them go home is pure madness, your talking about keeping costs down while ignoring the easiest way to get profits up, and taking your comment into account about large start up costs then even more reason to get the turnover up into big figures asap !!!

You want these girls to be earning a grand a week and working 10 hours a day as they are driven to the goal of earning a big paycheck, you want to be paying them the higher rate of prsi as it means that they are earning big money = you are earning even more off their efforts !!!

Here, give the guy a break. None of us know what his business actually is. Or who the staff are. They might just be packaging boxes for him for all we know. And maybe there is only so much work for them to do each week - once it's done it's done, so no point keeping them around.

And he's only getting started, so has to test the water a bit - which I think is the correct approach at first. If he can't afford to pay them more at the moment, then there's not much he can do

infamous

Thanks Gavney, the work comes in on a daily basis so there would be no benefit in keeping my employess late giving them bonuses etc as per Hammertime. The work is also quite skilled so overworking employees leads to a drop in quality and alot of time spent correcting work. Wages costs are approximatly 40% of my sales so it is a key cost to control I have never employed anyone so total novice in this regard and seen staying below the prsi bracket as an obvious saving.