Up to 170,000 homeworkers could get more money under new minimum wage regulations.
The changes will mean that home and piece workers will have to be paid at a rate that is linked to the National Minimum Wage.
Homeworkers are employed by a wide range of companies in a variety of roles, including packing greeting cards, feeding strings into cloth products and assembling Christmas crackers.
From October 2004, employers will:
In April 2005, employers will have to pay the average worker at a rate of 120% of the national minimum wage for a block of work.
For example, from this October an employer will have to carry out tests to establish the mean hourly output rate. If the tests show that, for example, an average worker completes 10 pieces in an hour, the employer would have to pay his workers at least 45 pence per piece in order to comply with the regulations (i.e. equal to the current minimum wage rate of £4.50 an hour).
From April 2005, the piece rate would increase to 54 pence per piece (i.e. equal to the current minimum wage rate of £4.50 an hour).
The draft regulations are a result of two consultations over the last 12 months on replacing the present system of fair estimate agreement with a system of fair piece rates.
Employment Relations Minister Gerry Sutcliffe said: “This change to the law will be especially important to ethnic minority and women workers, who make up a large proportion of people who work at home.”
