{"id":28120,"date":"2021-03-19T13:43:36","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T13:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=28120"},"modified":"2021-03-22T16:05:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T16:05:58","slug":"supreme-court-ruling-is-deeply-disappointing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=28120","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court ruling is \u00e2\u20ac\u0098deeply disappointing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The government needs to step in and change the law following today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (Friday March 19) Supreme Court ruling that carers, who have to sleep at their workplace in case they are needed overnight, are not entitled to the national minimum wage (NMW) for their whole shift.<\/p>\n

The call came from Unite, which said the Supreme Court had failed to recognise the \u00e2\u20ac\u0098immense contribution\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 that highly skilled care workers make during the night delivering essential adult social care, especially during the year-long pandemic.<\/p>\n

Unite said that the ruling would do nothing to tackle the \u00e2\u20ac\u0098recruitment and retention\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 crisis with thousands of vacancies in the care sector and the wider funding \u00e2\u20ac\u0098gap\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in social care that the government has repeatedly said it was going to address<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis is a deeply disappointing judgment by the Supreme Court which will further depress the wages of an already lowly-paid workforce of highly skilled care workers,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 commented Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe social care sector has been facing a funding crisis for the last 20 years. This judgement gives a green light to employers to continue to pay \u00e2\u20ac\u0098poverty wages\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to a workforce where women are in the majority. Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ruling will do nothing to retain staff nor recruit skilled workers to look after the elderly and support disabled people.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe believe that those staff who sleep-in at their workplace are, in fact, working. Their first and only commitment is to those they care for during the night and they are \u00e2\u20ac\u0098on call\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, and work through the night when required.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is now time for the government to step in and change the legislation so care workers receive at least the national minimum wage during the course of the whole night.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt goes without saying that throughout the pandemic these dedicated key workers have worked under immense pressure, and this should be recognised by the government.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bBoris Johnson promised when he became prime minister in July 2019: \u00e2\u20ac\u0098We will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bNow it is time for the prime minister to unveil his so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u0098clear plan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and deliver a pay rise for workers in social care, which is made all the more urgent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 by the Supreme Court ruling.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIn the overall scheme of things, this would be a relatively small financial cost compared with the \u00c2\u014137bn that the government has spent on the flawed private sector-led \u00e2\u20ac\u0098test and trace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 system.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s judgement upholds the Court of Appeal decision in 2018 which found\u00c2\u00a0that care worker Ms Tomlinson-Blake was only entitled to the NMW when she was actually carrying out her duties \u00e2\u20ac\u201c such as helping a patient or doing other work \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and not when she was sleeping or resting.<\/p>\n

The national minimum wage will be \u00c2\u01418.91 an hour from April 2021.<\/p>\n

By Shaun Noble <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government needs to step in and change the law following today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (Friday March 19) Supreme Court ruling that carers, who have to sleep at their workplace in case they are needed overnight, are not entitled to the national minimum wage (NMW) for their whole shift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1322,96],"wps_subtitle":"Law needs to change for care workers to have decent pay rise","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28122,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28120\/revisions\/28122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}