Rates of Pay

A number of Home Carers from South Lanarkshire have been in touch.

The readers are mystified at a proposed  pay increase from the council which sounds like good news - yet people are wary and possibly for good reason.

At the moment the Home Carers rate of pay is £8.44 an hour.

But the whole business of their pay and hourly rate is complicated - by a requirement for the carers need to work alternate weekends - and to do 'split shifts'.

Now in the past - in the days before South Lanarkshire Council's version of Single Status - both split shift working and weekend working attracted premium rates of pay.

So people could easily tell how much more they were being paid for working a Saturday or a Sunday - time and a half or double time, for example.

Nowadays the carers are being paid an 'all inclusive' rate - that is the same rate of pay whenever they are working.

But it should still be possible to work out their basic hourly rate of pay - or the core rate of pay - that people are paid  for working 'normal' hours.

At the same time it should be easy - not rocket science - to work out how much more  people are being paid - for doing alternate weekends and spilt shifts. 

Now if £8.44 an hour includes payment for working alternate weekends and doing 'split shifts'  - I suspect the basic hourly rate of pay is much nearer £7.00 an hour - maybe even less than £7 an hour - depending on the spread of hours and shifts.

In which case I would say people have been underpaid for years - though without all the details to hand it's difficult to say for sure.

So what I would do is to ask the council to explain how the £8.44 - or any proposed new hourly rate - is actually made up - how are the figures calculated?

I can't see why the council would not be willing to provide that information to the carers - or indeed anyone else - unless they had something to hide.

After all the council's pay system ought to be open and transparent - not some closely guarded state secret.

And if the council digs its heels in and refuses to explain anything - then people can always ask for a full declaration of their terms and conditions - under Section 11 of the Employment Rights Act.

Meantime I wouldn't sign anything and I would be very wary of agreeing to any new conditions - without having these issues properly explained and the opportunity of taking advice.

Because the final point of interest is whether or not all workers are treated the same way - or do some traditional male jobs receive more favourable treatment?