Care workers awarded £100,000 in back pay – but why is their NEW employer paying it?
How pleasant to see home carers being awarded the pay they are due!
In a court victory, home care workers contracted by Haringey Council in North London were awarded £100,000 in back pay.
That’s between them, not individually – amounting to around £10,000 for each of the 10 claimants.
It seems the council had given the work contract to a private provider called Sevacare that cheated them out of money they should have been paid for travel time between patient visits.
As a result, some of them ended up being paid less than £4 per hour – less than the minimum wage, and much less than even the “National Living Wage” that the Tories introduced, which still doesn’t cover living expenses.
Care service companies, Kaamil Education Limited, Diligent Care Services Limited and Premier Carewaiting Limited say they inherited the case when they took over the work contract.
The firms who took over the contracts were ordered to pay the claimants.
Wait – what?
Why were the new providers ordered to pay? Why couldn’t the offending firm do it?
Has it gone out of business? Government contractors seem to do that, don’t they? Does anybody remember Carillion?
Mrs Mike was completely unimpressed by this story.
She reckons the problem is the sub-contracting of care work by councils to private providers, who always say they can do the work for a very low price.
Then the bosses and shareholders take their cut (Mrs Mike said), and the people who do the actual work end up with whatever’s left – the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel.
It’s a consequence of privatisation, she said. It was better when councils employed care workers directly.
Given this result, I’d say she makes a good point. Wouldn’t you?
Source: Unison: Care workers who made £4 an hour awarded in £100,000 court case – BBC News
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It’s worth mentioning that a firm named Sevacare are active in South Wales at the present time, though they trade under the name Care Cymru. And no, they don’t pay travel time either…