Homecare staff lose out

Up to 200,000 workers are being paid less than the minimum wage with clients also losing out, the public service union UNISON says.

The endemic non-payment of travel time for homecare workers means that thousands of work hours, travelling between clients are unpaid, pushing their incomes below the statutory minimum wage. And inadequate enforcement of the National Minimum Wage laws means that homecare workers are being illegally paid on a staggering scale.

At the heart of the crisis is a lack of regulation; there is no longer any regulation of local authority homecare commissioning. The result is that price has become the overriding priority in the commissioning process, negatively impacting on clients and staff.

Understaffing and under-resourcing mean that homecare workers are stretched to their limit, having to "cram" in calls and provide care in their personal time. The rise in zero-hours contracts, teamed with inconsistent, unregulated training standards, means that staff are not always able to provide the quality and continuity of care they want to give their clients.

Heather Wakefield, head of local government at UNISON, said: “Homecare workers have no option but to travel between clients and not paying them for this time is a cynical circumvention of minimum wage law. The government, councils and providers must provide a definitive solution to this issue and stop this widespread flouting of the law.”

www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=2984