Care workers sue Sevacare for paying as little as £3.27 per hour

Seventeen care workers are taking the home care firm Sevacare and the Haringey council to court in a dispute over illegal wages.

The group of sixteen women and one man were employed on controversial zero-hours contracts and cared for elderly and disabled residents across the London Borough of Haringey but are suing the firm and the council chiefly over a failure to pay them the minimum wage.

The care workers visited people in their own homes and in some cases provided live-in care, but live-in carers who say they gave 24 hour care got as little as £3.27 an hour – less than half the minimum wage.

The legal dispute also covers worker’s time spent travelling between people’s houses which was unpaid.

Biggest ever home care legal case

The trade union UNISON, which is backing the staff in what is its biggest ever home care legal case, says on a typical day the workers might work away from home for as many as 14 hours but could receive payment for only half of them. This amounts to as little as £3.85 an hour. The national living wage (the legal minimum for workers aged 25 and over) is currently £7.20 an hour.

Haringey Council is also being sued at the Central London Employment Tribunal, for failing to ensure the workers were paid the minimum wage.

In April, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) shut the Sevacare branch in Haringey, London, resulting in the council ending its relationship with Sevacare.

"Raising serious concerns"

A spokesman for Haringey Council said: "Haringey ended its relationship with Sevacare in April after previously raising serious concerns with the Care Quality Commission.

"We contractually require providers to obey minimum wage law, including remuneration for travel time, and regularly seek information from providers on how much they pay their staff.

"Our rates allow for providers to pay both the national minimum wage and the national living wage, and we will be writing to them all to remind them of their Care Act obligations, stating clearly that no breaches will be tolerated."

Until July, Sevacare was one of the biggest providers of adult social care in Haringey. The care provider still has contracts with a number of other local authorities across England.

Earlier this year, Sevacare was forced to settle a claim with Judith Montgomery, a former home care worker from Bury. It had to pay her £3,250 following an employment tribunal claim that non-payment of travel time led her hourly pay to fall below the legal minimum.

UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis said: “Without the dedication of these committed and caring women, and thousands of others like them across the UK, our care system would collapse.

“The government, local councils and the care companies all know that social care is in a dire state, that there’s not enough money to pay for the care that’s needed. And with everyone living longer the situation is going to get worse.

“The blame for the social care crisis must be laid at the government’s door. Ministers must get tougher with enforcing the law so firms aren’t able to cheat their staff. More money must be put into care so that councils are not forced to tender contracts at a price they know decent care cannot be delivered.

'Care workers paying the price'

“Those paying the price for the government’s penny-pinching approach are the home care workers – struggling to make ends meet on pitiful wages – and the people they care for."

Sevacare response

In a statement, Sevacare said: 'We feel that it is beneficial to ascertain and understand the circumstances and processes in which the sector operates; however the fundamental underlying issue undoubtedly is the inadequate funding of social care for the elderly by government.

'Sevacare submits that it pays, and had paid to these staff, an average hourly rate that is at least the NMW over any pay reference period. We would highlight that the obligation to pay the NMW is not to ensure that the NMW is paid for each hour worked, but to ensure that the average hourly rate is at least the NMW over a pay reference period.

'Sevacare has a minimum base pay rate that has always been above the NMW rate. We also pay all staff for the full commissioned call time irrespective of the actual contact time they have with a service user.

"With specific reference to the “live-in” pay rate, care workers are paid for a weekly shift when completing a “live-in” assignment. For this assignment they are paid £550 per week.

“Live-in” work is classified as unmeasured work by the HMRC and to such end falls under a “daily average agreement”. This agreement is based on 10 hours of work per day spread throughout the day. Our payroll system however only operates on a figure by “hourly units” and to this end the £550 weekly pay is divided by 168 [hours] in order to produce the £3.27 you state.

"The actual NMW calculation relates to daily average of 10 hours x seven days = 70 hours (£550 /70 = £7.85)."

The Resolution Foundation think tank has estimated in 2015 that 160,000 care workers in England and Wales were not paid the national living wage. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs previously announced it would investigate whether the big six care providers were paying people the minimum wage.

Nineteen local authorities have signed up to UNISON’s ethical care charter- which guarantees hours for home care workers, payment for travel time and hourly rates of at least the Living Wage Foundation’s living wage of £8.25 an hour and £9.40 in the capital.

You can see Unison's ethical charter by visiting www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2013/11/On-line-Catalogue220142.pdf