Minister rejects call for grace period on minimum wage law

The government has dismissed a political party's call for a buffer period after introduction of the statutory minimum wage during which small businesses would not be punished for breaching the new law.

'There is no such thing as a buffer period. The government does not intend to have one,' Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said.

The proposal was made by the business-oriented Liberal Party at a meeting with Cheung yesterday.

'We suggest a half-year buffer period in which bosses of [small and medium enterprises] would not face immediate prosecution,' party chairwoman Miriam Lau Kin-yee said after the meeting.

The minimum wage of HK$28 an hour comes into effect on Sunday. The party said the grace period would give businesses time to become familiar with the law.

Rejecting the idea, Cheung said the government would be pragmatic in enforcing the Minimum Wage Ordinance. 'The most important thing is that we have to understand the reason why an employer has broken the law - whether they broke it deliberately or just carelessly and unintentionally,' he said.

Flexibility would be shown towards employers who miscalculated the wage inadvertently, although they would still be required to pay the wages owed, he said.