Labour has pledged to crackdown on “unscrupulous” employers who fail to pay care staff for time spent travelling on the job.
It comes amid warnings hundreds of care workers battling the cost-of-living disaster are lacking out on a whole bunch of kilos every month. Under National Minimum Wage guidelines staff will be paid when they’re travelling for job-related functions – however Labour says this isn’t at all times the case.
A survey by the Unison union earlier this 12 months of greater than 300 care staff throughout England discovered three out of 4 care workers weren’t being paid for travelling between appointments.
As a part of Labour’s plans for a New Deal for social care staff, the occasion says it’ll work with HMRC to make sure the wage rules are enforced. Deputy Leader Angela Rayner stated: “Labour’s New Deal for Care Workers will guarantee hundreds on the frontline in grownup social care this Christmas are handled with dignity and respect.”
She added: “Workers can spend hours a day travelling, not earning any money, forcing them to work longer and longer hours just to make ends meet.
“Labour believes that everyone deserves a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, including workers who must travel between jobs. We’ll ensure regulations on travel time are actually enforced so any unscrupulous employers will no longer be able to get away with breaking the law and denying their workers their legal wage.”
The Labour MP Paula Barker has previously launched a private members’ bill in the House of Commons seeking to ensure all carers are paid for travel time.
She told The Mirror earlier this year: The premise of the Bill is really simple – it’s merely to enforce existing legislation, and that’s quite shocking really. This is predominantly low-paid, women workers in the social care sector. As a result of not being paid travel time their pay falls below the minimum wage.”
According to the most recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures over 150,000 care workers and home carers worked on Christmas Day in 2020.