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Pay degradation in homecare

Updated: Jan 31

The following blog was written by Julie Sansom, a member of Homecare Workers’ Group.


Last night I worked for six and a half hours, from 3.30 until 10pm. During that time I did nine care visits to peoples’ homes. Each visit was scheduled to last thirty minutes. Legally I should be paid for six and a half hours’ work, but because I’m only paid for the time I am in each person’s home and not for in-work travel and waiting time of up to 30 minutes between visits, my hourly rate will work out at £9.69 per hour instead of the £14 stated on my contract. National Minimum Wage is £11.44 per hour. How can this be allowed?


We are paid on a fortnightly basis. For each pay period the company legally has to ensure that our pay from across all of the runs we have done averages out at least the National Minimum Wage of £11.44, including travel and waiting time. If you do a run that takes you below the minimum wage, like the one described above, then another run might take you back above it. As long as it averages out as at least minimum wage, an employer is legally in the clear, though your hourly rate of pay is always lower than what’s stated on your contract if travel and waiting time is unpaid.


 

True Hourly Pay Calculator


Homecare Workers’ Group can calculate the true hourly rate of pay for one of your homecare runs for free, and provides you a method for working out the rest of them yourself.


 

Unpaid travel and waiting time aside, there are a number of other factors that degrade take-home pay for homecare workers:


  • We get no help for car maintenance costs and let’s be clear, the short journeys and constant stopping and starting completely wreck our vehicles

  • We pay our own car business insurance

  • Care visits often run over, and we are not paid for this additional time

  • We are paid mileage as the crow flies, but wait! We don’t fly between calls, we drive, along roads covered in pot holes and in rush hour when there are long queues of traffic

  • Some of us are also not paid for the online training we are told we have to complete, which must be carried out in our own time

  • We are not paid for meetings or support sessions we attend in the office, also in our own time not work time

  • We are not paid for the time it takes to pick up PPE from the office which we have to do on a regular basis. 

  • We also get no sick pay and feel pressured into working when ill, potentially infecting the people we support


My employer argues that all of the above are unpaid because our contracted rate of pay is high, but we have already seen that in reality we barely scrape minimum wage.


I would argue that all of these unpaid activities will likely mean we are all being paid below minimum wage. Employers get away with this because it is very difficult to quantify these things and prove that it takes us below minimum wage. Everyone is on a different rate of pay and the rate of pay will change depending on your run, the amount of gaps and the amount of travel time we get.


Last year I did some calculations, all very rough estimates and based on an average shift, if there is such a thing. I worked out that there are around 639 hours of unpaid work carried out by a full-time homecare worker every single year. This is absolutely mind blowing.


 

Work-related expenses


Homecare Workers’ Group is doing what it can to draw attention to the many ways that pay is degraded for homecare workers as a result of unpaid work-related expenses.


 

I brought some of these issues to the attention of my manager in a recent meeting. Her response was something akin to the following: “if you continue to criticise the company we will reduce your hours”. This brings me nicely on to my next point. Zero-hours contracts!


These contracts in the care sector are exploitative in the extreme. In this same meeting I was told my employer cannot guarantee that the hours I am provided with will cover my mortgage. I have worked for this company for nearly three and a half years on a full-time basis. Why on earth I can’t rely on this income to meet these basic needs is an absolute disgrace.


I am of the strong belief that the day the care sector was privatised was the day a process began. A steady but inevitable downward spiral of a system that puts profit above quality of care and a workforce that becomes more and more demoralised and despondent by the day. The care sector has the highest turnover of staff of any sector in the UK for all of the reasons I have outlined above.


So why do we stay? Because we have no choice when there are bills and mortgages to pay. Because we have good relationships with the people we support and walking away would affect their continuity of care. Because we are afraid to speak up as a result of one-sided contracts.


 

Peer support


Homecare Workers’ Group is a not-for-profit peer support network run by and for homecare workers in England. We host a secure online community, fortnightly drop-ins and quarterly in-person meetups around the country, as well as letting homecare workers know about other ways to get involved in meaningful activities outside of work.


 

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Homecare Workers' Group C.I.C

Ingenuity Centre, University Of Nottingham

Innovation Park

Triumph Road

Nottingham

England

NG7 2TU

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