I see that aeon-pool(dot)com has put a notice to encourage miners to mine on other pools in order to help decentralizing the network and prevent a pool from having more than 50% of the entire network's hash. That's a really nice move.
One thing that discourage miners from moving to a different pool is the pending balance below the payment threshold (the so called 'dust'). Even 0.001 AEON will be worth something in the near future.
So, I have a suggestion to pool operators:
If a miner stops mining on your pool for, let's say, 24 or 48 hours then all the pending balance (no matter how small) should be paid to the miner.
Just my 2 satoshis
I agree that this is a problem, and I like your solution. The only consideration is that the solution should not cost the pool transaction fees. Provided the dust owed to the miner is more than the tx fee, should be good!
But this begs the question: why exactly should a denomination unit be imposed when paying miners? I mean, why not pay everything owed to the miner up until the last decimal in the first place (leaving the miner with a pending balance of 'zero' after each payment)?