IMPACT has called time on the exploitation of residential care staff, as a series of information meetings gets underway across the country about sleepover duties and excessive working hours.

The union campaign highlights the fact that many health employers regularly breach EU and Irish working time legislation, with residential care staff routinely expected to work 63-hour weeks. The legal maximum is 48 hours.

In her blog for the IMPACT website, organiser Una Faulkner explained, “This issue is about the substantial hours that workers spend on-call while they are in-situ at residential facilities over night. ‘Sleepover’ duty, as it is known, is part of the working week for residential care staff. The problem is that health employers do not treat these ‘sleepover’ hours as working time for pay purposes, or when they’re calculating the time that can be legally worked. This means that staff are expected to work excessive hours.

“They receive a ‘sleepover’ allowance of just €5.40 an hour, which is well below the statutory minimum wage of €8.65. It is usual for staff to be actively working to provide care during some or all of the ‘sleepover’ period” she said.

IMPACT has already lodged a formal complaint with the European Commission, saying that employers are breaching EU rules by not counting ‘sleepovers’ as working time.

The union wants staff to work a maximum of one ‘sleepover’ a week on average. “This should be worked as part of the 39 hours set out in their contracts. Any work beyond 39 hours, including so-called ‘sleepovers’, should be paid as overtime,” said Una.

She said this would improve the management of time and resources because staff would not find themselves pushed beyond the legal limits. “Ultimately, these measures would also improve the quality and level of care.”