Community and disability sleepovers

Community & disability sleepovers

WE'RE working with several disability service providers regarding award and enterprise agreement breaches relating to sleepover times.

The Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award is very clear. It says you can be rostered to perform either a 7 or 8-hour sleepover, and enterprise agreements also reflect this award provision. What we're seeing now is an alarming trend where staff have been regularly and systematically rostered to perform shifts over the 8-hour maximum time without being paid for it. Make no mistake – you are entitled to be paid at the relevant rate of pay for the extra time rostered and performed. One of the organisations we're working with believes they only have to pay a portion of the sleepover allowance and not the relevant rate of pay, but they're wrong. We recently held a conference meeting with that employer and the Fair Work Commission and the commissioner was quite clear in his directive. He said the extra time is to be recognised and paid as time worked at the applicable rate of pay, not as a portion of the sleepover allowance. But this employer then sent a communication to staff saying they have been paid correctly – as a portion of the allowance, not at the relevant rate of pay – and that was that. They then wrote to HACSU stating that their version of how they paid staff was correct and if HACSU choose to seek further advice on this matter then that's our choice. We simply don't accept this misguided attempt at wage theft and are currently working out our next steps in this saga. When you are working for robber barons like this it pays to be a member of your union. HACSU makes sure you're protected and represented when these sitautions arise as well as keeping you updated as the issue progresses.