The key to making all arrangements work for the benefit of service users, home helps and the county council itself is to ensure that demands made of staff are reasonable and problems are sorted through discussion and agreement.

For instance, it is not reasonable for workers to be asked to forgo legal rest periods nor is it reasonable to instruct staff to work longer than they are contracted for.

Where problems arise, attempts to overcome them should be made at patch level through discussions between the DSO and staff. UNISON will assist members in this.

Contract Hours

Your weekly contract hours must be paid for on a weekly basis. You must not agree to average out your hours over 2 or more weeks.

Working over your contract hours is a purely voluntary arrangement; your DSO cannot force you to do extra hours. Ask your DSO to schedule only your contract hours on your rota; any extra work should be done by volunteers. This should be shared out equally.

HOMECARE NEWS Derbyshire County UNISON Briefing May 2013

01629 582266 branch@unisondc.co.uk

2011 Contracts

ReasonableReasonable is the word!is the word! We know some members are still having difficulties with the ‘new’ contracts which came into force in 2011. These include contract hours, rest periods, care arrangements and weekend/bank holiday working. This briefing hopes to clear up some of the misunderstandings which the council has allowed to continue unchallenged.

UNISON advice on

Contract hours

Rest periods

Split shifts

Personal caring

responsibilities

Weekend

working

Bank holiday

working

Negotiating

changes

Rest Periods

Under the European Working Time Directive, homecare workers are generally allowed the following

A minimum daily rest break of 20 minutes in every working day lasting more than 6 hours

A minimum daily rest period of at least 11 consecutive hours in each 24-hour period

An uninterrupted weekly rest period of at least 24 hours (this can be replaced by two uninterrupted rest periods of not less than 24 hours in each 14-day period, or one uninterrupted rest period of not less than 48 hours in each 14-day period).

Young workers under the age of 18 may not be employed for more than 40 hours a week or for more than 8 hours on any day. In addition, they have the right to a minimum rest break of 30 minutes in every working day lasting more than four and a half hours.

Therefore, if you finish your shift at 9.00pm one night, you should not be working again till 8.00am the following morning. If it takes you a considerable amount of time to get to your first call or home from your last, then this should not be included in your rest time.

Split shifts

UNISON does not like or agree with split shifts but they are not illegal and you can be asked to work them. However, these must be reasonable requests.

It would most likely be deemed unreasonable for one worker to be asked to do split shifts every day, unless they wanted to do this, if others were not being asked to cover split shifts.

Importantly, you need to discuss with your DSO so that split shifts are kept to a minimum and are dealt with equally and fairly amongst the whole patch bearing in mind any caring responsibilities your colleagues have.

Personal caring responsibilities

Caring responsibilities, including taking/collecting children from school and

caring for elderly or disabled relatives, merit special attention from your employer. You can apply through HR to be considered for flexible working.

Ask your DSO for more details and an application form.

Weekend working

There is a mistaken belief that the new contracts set in stone the number of weekends that every home help needs to work. Some have been told by their line management that it is now 1 in 2.

There is no such figure. It is, once again, what is reasonable given the circumstances of the individual worker. Weekend working should first be offered to those who volunteer to do it - some staff prefer to work weekends and less during the week to fit in with care responsibilities at home or second jobs.

Discuss and try to agree the best possible arrangements to accommodate the wishes of all staff on the patch, or as near to them as possible. Your DSO should not slot people into shifts without considering the needs of individuals.

Bank holiday working

Likewise, bank holidays should be covered initially by volunteers. Only if there are not enough volunteers should there be a need to slot others into rotas, after discussion to see what best suits most people on the patch.

It is not correct to say you must work a specified number of bank holidays.

Organising locally

Hopefully, knowing your rights to collectively and individually ‘negotiate’ (ie discuss and agree) the best solutions in your patch, will be a help to most of you.

But UNISON is there to help if necessary. One of our Area Organisers, Dave Gorton, will be available to visit areas in need of help or guidance.

This will best be done by Dave coming to a meeting of staff organised by home helps themselves (not patch meetings). But … before you arrange a meeting … please contact Dave to make sure he’s available. You can call him on 07921 474704 or email dave.gorton@unisondc.co.uk

Building UNISON strength in your

patch

Problems are, of course, more easily resolved if everyone’s in a union. You can help in this. You’re best placed to discuss with any non-members in your patch why they should join UNISON; they know you and trust you - they will listen to you.

Workers can join online at joinunison.org.uk or get application forms from the branch office 01629 582266.

If any home help is interested in getting more involved in UNISON, or just wants to know a bit more about us, then contact Dave Gorton for a chat.

And finally

Please let us have any email address you have now. UNISON sends out regular information via email that you may miss if we can’t send it you. Just send an email to branch@unisondc.co.uk with your name and we’ll do the rest.