[quote sweetbellyhigh]@ChristmasPlanning
It sounds like a care worker job. They do the night shift in houses with young adults/vulnerable adults. Generally they just sleep but they have to deal with anything that crops up eg fire alarm, distressed residents [/quote]
There was a kerfuffle a while back because so many agencies paid very poor rates for sleep-in contracts—basically because they claimed people go to sleep but, in reality, in a lot of situations, people are helping someone pretty much all night long.
This was the last update I saw. Mencap and other agencies insisted that they should only have to pay minimum wage rate and that only for the hours that people were awake and working.
The government is under pressure to reform care laws after the supreme court ruled that support workers on “sleep-in” shifts are not required to be paid the national minimum wage for hours when they are not awake..
The decision ends a four-year legal battle involving two care workers and the learning disability charity Mencap….
The court said care workers should only be paid the national minimum wage hourly rate on sleep-in shifts when they were awake for the purposes of working.
…the decision means thousands of care support workers – already on low incomes – potentially face substantial cuts in earnings.
…
Before 2017, care workers on sleep-ins were paid a flat rate, receiving an hourly rate only for the hours they were awake for the purposes of working. This changed after guidance said care workers should be paid the national minimum wage for all the hours they were at work, regardless of whether they were asleep.
An employment tribunal confirmed this in 2017:
A year later the appeal court reversed the back-pay decision and ruled flat-rate payments were fair, meaning sleep-in care workers could receive the full rate only for those hours during which they were awake and assisting the client.
www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/19/sleep-in-care-workers-not-entitled-minimum-wage-supreme-court