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'Sleepover' shifts classed as work, Employment Court rules

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Lovelee
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« on: July 08, 2009, 08:46:13 pm »

Sleepover' shifts classed as work, court rules


The Employment Court has ruled support workers who get paid $34 a night to sleep over at community homes for the disabled should be getting the minimum wage for those shifts.

The court has issued an interim ruling on a case brought by unions representing workers who do the sleepover shifts.

In May, Levin support worker Philip Dickson told the court that staff worked the 10-hour shift for $34.

His employer, Idea Services, says support staff are rarely disturbed during their shifts, and are paid hourly for any work done if awakened.

The court's interim ruling says the support staff are working while on sleepovers and should get the minimum wage.

It is asking the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand for submissions on how the payments should be made.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2009/07/08/1245bb8674ff
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« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2009, 09:22:28 pm »

Interesting.
I have a friend who does this sort of work for Home & Family  working with "last chance before you lose your kids" type women  .  Drug addiction  abused kids etc. The pay she gets is pathetic and hardly anything for sleepovers .
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Lovelee
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« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2009, 09:37:50 pm »

This is good in some ways and will make it difficult in others.

The worker should be paid full wages IMO.  This could end up with more live-in staff.

The community group will need more money from LOTTO grants to be able to pay the wages.

Theres good money to be made in the private area of tetraplegic care.
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« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2009, 12:24:42 pm »

I heard on the radio this morning that the IHC has come out and stated that it just doesn't have enough money to pay minium wage to staff doing "sleepover" shifts.

Guess where the bill for that will end up?


Still it is a health and safety issue for the workers. If they can't earn a living wage then they have to work a day job as well on broken sleep. Fine for short periods like before a baby learns to sleep through the night but hell on your health if it goes on for years.
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« Reply #4 on: July 09, 2009, 12:29:25 pm »

IHC millions short to pay overnight staff
New 11:41AM Thursday Jul 09, 2009
By Hamish Stuart
Disabled care organisation IHC must find millions of dollars to pay staff who sleep over at its houses following a benchmark Employment Court ruling released yesterday.

But the organisation says it doesn't have the money and already pays staff everything the Government gives it.

General manager of human resources and training David Timms said the IHC would be asking the Ministry of Health for more money to pay its staff, after the court ruled staff were working while sleeping over at its community.

"We're welcoming this decision. It's good to have a clear ruling on this," he told NZPA.

Carer wages started at $13.50 an hour and went up to about $19, to look after some "very vulnerable people", he said.

"It is a big issue and it is important it is well aired. Our staff do a fantastic job and I wish we could pay them more."

Under the ruling, staff staying overnight at the IHC's houses are entitled to get at least $12.50 per hour for their 10-hour shifts. Staff currently receive a shift allowance of $34 per night. IHC has about 250,000 of the sleep-over shifts per year.

 
The landmark case was brought before the court by a residential worker in one of IHC's community homes, who cared for five disabled people.

Service and Food Workers Union advocate John Ryall said staff working in the houses often faced heavy workloads after 10pm. Before the ruling, their efforts were not regarded as work.

Mr Ryall said he was very happy with the result, saying it could have wide-reaching ramifications within disabled care in New Zealand.

Some support workers were overnighting at the community houses up to six nights per week -- spending a total of 100 hours per week on the premises of their employers, he said.

However, with the existing rates, they were only being paid for 40 or 50 hours, with the rest of the time paid for with shift allowances working out to less than $4 per hour, Mr Ryall said.

Where IHC would get the money to meet the huge wage increase was a matter for the organisation and its funders -- ultimately the Government, he said.

"They have really been able to carry out these services on the cheap," he said.

New Zealand employment law regarding overnighting carers was now in line with that of Europe and Canada, he said.

- NZPA

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10583416
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Lovelee
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« Reply #5 on: July 09, 2009, 01:24:46 pm »

Yep - while this is legal - damn its gonna hit us heavily.

Another reason to lift taxation?  Cheesy
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« Reply #6 on: July 09, 2009, 03:08:02 pm »

Mrs Crusader is the regional family/whanau manager for IDEA services here in Marlborough and she is the one responsible for payment to these people. She has commented that they do deserve to be paid but the big problem is where do they get the money from? They do have much Government funding and what they have they need to spend it on the patients.
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« Reply #7 on: July 09, 2009, 04:23:35 pm »

It will have to be found, somewhere.
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Crusader
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« Reply #8 on: July 09, 2009, 06:02:04 pm »

Which means tax payer is most likely going to have to fork out for it. So what will be sacrificed to pay these workers, education, public roading?
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« Reply #9 on: July 09, 2009, 06:08:49 pm »

Quote
Another reason to lift taxation?
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« Reply #10 on: July 09, 2009, 10:44:12 pm »

Mrs Crusader is the regional family/whanau manager for IDEA services here in Marlborough and she is the one responsible for payment to these people. She has commented that they do deserve to be paid but the big problem is where do they get the money from? They do have much Government funding and what they have they need to spend it on the patients.

I have the dubious privalage of being able to claim respite care. It is paid out in set amounts of a "half day" which is anything from a few hours to 8 hours or a "full day" which is 24 hours. As I use it to put sp2 into school holiday programmes and the odd bit of babysitting I have been left out of pocket by the adding up system.
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« Reply #11 on: September 12, 2011, 10:34:11 pm »


Disability worker sleepover pay dispute settled

By KATE NEWTON - The Dominion Post | 3:52PM - Monday, 12 September 2011

PHIL DICKSON: Has been involved in the sleepover issue since the start.
PHIL DICKSON: Has been involved in the sleepover issue
since the start.


NEARLY $120 million in back pay and minimum wage rates for disability workers doing "sleepover" shifts will be funded by the Government, following a settlement with unions.

A Cabinet meeting this morning agreed to contribute $90 million toward phasing in minimum wage rates for affected workers by July 2013, and $27.5 million in back-pay.

Disability provider IHC will fund another $27.5 million in back-pay and a small contribution — less than $10 million — towards minimum wage rates.

A legal battle has been raging since 2007 over whether disability workers who work overnight shifts should be paid a full hourly wage.

An Employment Relations Authority case, taken by Levin worker Phil Dickson in 2007, was upheld by the Employment Court and the Court of Appeal.

The Supreme Court was scheduled to hear IHC's appeal against the Court of Appeal decision tomorrow, but that hearing was put on hold after a deal between the Government, IHC and workers was agreed to in principle last week.

Health Minister Tony Ryall said the parties have agreed to ask for court proceedings to be discontinued.

The Government will also introduce legislation to Parliament before the sitting term end, in order to secure the agreement.

The deal was a fair one, Mr Ryall said.

"People with disabilities and their families can be assured that providing quality support remains a priority for this Government."

Under the deal, 3700 sleepover workers throughout New Zealand will initially be paid about $60 a sleepover, or 50 per cent of the minimum wage.

From July 01, the payment will move to 75 per cent of the minimum wage — $9.75 an hour, or $88 for a nine-hour sleepover. The payment will then move to the full minimum wage (now $13 an hour) to $117 a sleepover by Christmas 2012.

Union national secretary and chief negotiator John Ryall said his members would receive anywhere between $10,000 and $70,000 in backpay two months after the empowering legislation had been passed.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/politics/5610132/Disability-worker-sleepover-pay-dispute-settled
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« Reply #12 on: September 14, 2011, 05:06:46 pm »


Brian Rudman

Wake up! Time to pay support staff

Brian Rudman on National Issues

The New Zealand Herald | 5:30AM - Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Health Minister Tony Ryall. — Photo: Getty Images.
Health Minister Tony Ryall. — Photo: Getty Images.

ON MONDAY, the Cabinet agreed that New Zealand's 5700 disability support workers deserved to receive the minimum wage for overnight sleepover shifts.

But in a final gesture of the official mean-spiritedness that has dogged this struggle over five years and two governments, the winners are going to be kept waiting.

Health Minister Tony Ryall says the Government will introduce legislation to Parliament before the election to make the reform possible. But he and his staff have indicated the Government is making no effort to ensure the legislation passes before the country goes to the polls.

Perhaps the National Government sees few votes in doing the right thing by these scandalously low paid workers. Though they might be surprised. When your pay suddenly rockets from a derisory $3.77 an hour to $13 an hour, who knows, traditional party loyalties might well waver.

But even if they're not interested in gaining the votes of the lowest paid, National risks being seen as a bad loser if it doesn't ensure this simple legislation is pushed through in the remaining three weeks of parliamentary sitting time.

Labour's Labour Issues spokeswoman Darien Fenton says the Opposition will co-operate with the Government on the legislation so that these workers can begin to be rightly remunerated, so National really has no excuses for seeing its good work through to its conclusion.

As I pointed out earlier this year when writing about this issue, the Government has no hesitation in leaping to the rescue of its sort of people with dollops of public cash when it has a mind to. When 38,000 followers of the cult of Hubbard lost their shirts with the collapse of South Canterbury Finance, the Government said "there, there", and handed out $1.75 billion of taxpayer dollars in full compensation. There was not even a discount to punish them for their greed or stupidity or bad judgment.

The Government also rushed to the aid of rich movie-maker Sir Peter Jackson when local actors seeking a few crumbs from the master's table raised his ire. Swatting the actors aside, Prime Minister John Key smoothed the movie-maker's feathers by offering an extra $20 million tax break for his US partners.

Both examples show that where there's a will, governments can find the money fast.

More than 20 years ago, politicians on both sides of the House embraced the "modern" idea of caring for citizens with physical and mental disabilities within the community. The doors of the daunting Victorian-era psychiatric and psychopaedic hospitals were thrown open and a new era of enlightened care was announced. But from the start it was under-funded, propped up by the cheap labour of vital community-based support workers.

In 2007, the Service Workers Union went to the Employment Relations Agency seeking the minimum wage for sleepover workers, instead of the miserable lump sum shift payment they then received. In the case of IHC workers in whose name the settlement was sought, this amounts to $34 total for a nine-hour shift or $3.77 an hour.

The ERA agreed, at which stage IHC, which is bulk-funded to provide the service by the Government, appealed. And when it lost the appeal, it appealed again all the way to the Supreme Court.

This week's settlement is belated acknowledgement by the Government that it, and IHC, faced another defeat if the Supreme Court hearing went ahead.

As recently as July, when the union negotiators rejected a previous Government offer, Tony Ryall complained about the workers exploiting a "legal technicality" and wanting to be paid the minimum wage "for sleeping".

In response to this, John Ryall, the service workers national secretary, spoke of the problems providing overnight support for people with intellectual disabilities and mental health issues. This may include dealing with challenging behaviour, seizures or vomiting. "If they manage to get some sleep, they are on call."

That's the point the union made in the Employment Court. Firefighters, ambulance officers and resident doctors all get paid their full rate while sleeping "on call" so why not these caregivers?

The $100 million deal now agreed between the Government, IHC and the union is to be phased in over 15 months, with workers not getting the full $13 an hour minimum wage until Christmas 2012.

Sleepover work dating back to July 2004 will also be eligible for a backpay top-up, for a few reaching upwards of $70,000. The settlement also opens up the possibility of workers for other providers of similar services getting the same deal IHC workers have negotiated.

To trigger the backpay payments, the legislation has to be passed. The agreement states that 50 per cent of backpay will be handed to the workers no later than eight weeks after Parliament rubber-stamps the agreement. By rights, these workers should have received this money from at least 2004. It is theirs, and with Christmas approaching, they shouldn't have to wait a day longer.

If Parliament doesn't deal with it before it closes down for the election campaign, they could still be waiting into the New Year. They've surely waited long enough.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10751532
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« Reply #13 on: December 21, 2011, 03:19:39 pm »


Sleepover payout ‘a lovely surprise’

By TIM DONOGHUE - The Dominion Post | 5:00AM - Wednesday, 21 December 2011

MIRAMAR RESIDENT resident Lilian Lyons is enjoying the $29,500 windfall in her Christmas pay-packet this year.

For the past five years she has been one of the 3700 members of the Service and Food Workers Union who have fought to be paid the minimum wage for working overnight shifts for IHC.

The eagle finally landed this week when the workers received stage one of the total $100 million payout that involved gross backpay payouts of between $10,000 and $70,000.

Ms Lyons' $47,000 gross payout was reduced to $29,500 in the hand after tax.

Christmas for her two children, one grandson and extended family is going to be a good one. Already she has spent $900 on food for the Christmas season.

"We are all rapt. This has been a lovely Christmas. It was a very big surprise for everybody."

"We have done a lot of Christmas shopping. We did a big $900 food shop to stock up the cupboards. We've got a lot of meat, pork, chickens, ham and turkeys."

"You've got to have the real thing on Christmas Day. I'm a member of Christmas supermarket clubs so we always have a good Christmas."

"I have not worked out how much I'll be spending on alcohol yet, but I'll be buying some."

The most satisfying thing about the backpay deal was that at long last there was special recognition for herself and her workmates, Ms Lyons said. "Most people go home at 5 at night after work. I have not been able to do that for 17 years."

"To be paid an hourly rate for that is fantastic for us. When I first started sleepover work I was paid $15 per night."

Under the deal, the sleepover workers will initially be paid about $60 a sleepover, or 50 per cent of the minimum wage.

Until the new deal was ratified they were paid $34 a night.

From July 01, the payment will move to 75 per cent of the minimum wage, or $9.75 an hour, or $88 for a nine-hour sleepover. The payment will then move to the full minimum wage (now $13 an hour) to $117 a sleepover by next Christmas.

A possible increase in the minimum wage next year has also been factored into the deal, as well as the lump sum backpay paid out this month.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/6170594/Sleepover-payout-a-lovely-surprise
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