The evil capitalistic employers that most of us British subjects are forced to work under to get by do, of course, often like to give you the worst of everything they think they can get away with. Worst pay, worst holidays, worst working conditions and so on. Not to say the Government really does that much to help make your life something other than based on wage-slavery, but here and there they do specify legal minimums of the good stuff.

If you are the typical minimum wage minimum holiday type employer then the amounts have just gone up. Make sure you check that your employer is treating you (minimumly) right.

As of the beginning of October, the new minimum wage is £5.52 an hour for most people. 18-21 year olds get £4.60, 16-17 year olds get a tiny £3.40.

The statutory paid holiday entitlement has also gone up. It is now 4.8 weeks per year, which works out to 24 days if you work full-time.

Note that, contrary to some common thought, you may well be entitled to these "benefits" even if your employer is one of those abusive ones that insist on calling you a temp, casual worker or trainee as a desperate attempt to stop you getting what is rightfully yours. As the Citizen's Advice Bureau says:

It is common for an employer to call someone self-employed, or a ‘casual worker’ or a ‘trainee’, when that person is really an employee. Employers do this in order to avoid having to pay tax and national insurance for their employees and to try to avoid them having employment rights. It is irrelevant what your employer calls you, whether you are known as self employed, an agency worker, a casual worker, etc. In addition, just because you pay tax and national insurance as a ‘self-employed’ person, it does not automatically follow that you are actually self-employed rather than an employee. What matters is what happens in practice about how you work, who decides what work you do and what you are expected to do by your employer.

Read that document, seek advice and do whatever else you can if you think your work are treating you wrongly. For most workers in the UK, it is illegal for your company to pay you less than minimum wage or give you less that the statutory paid holidays. Don't let them get away with it!

Discuss it with your colleagues, if you like them. You might think it couldn't happen with all the electro-checks and balances in place these days, but the Poorhouse knows first-hand of at least one big evil international corporation that was paying some of its staff below minimum wage for at least several months. That is a crime.