Unions criticise top-ups as staff paid less than minimum wage

Trade unions have said that the HSE is tolerating top-up payments to senior managers in some voluntary agencies while refusing to address the issue of staff in some residential childcare and disability agencies being paid below the minimum wage for working essential sleepovers.

Siptu and Impact also maintained that HSE management had admitted that residential child care and disability agencies were routinely breaching working time legislation by requiring staff to work an excessive number of sleepovers on top of their standard 39-hour working week.

The unions today referred the issue to the Labour Court after talks, under the auspices of the Labour Relations Commission, broke down earlier this week.

The unions stated that management in the agencies and the HSE had failed to reach a resolution on the issue despite six months of talks.

The unions said staff were being expected to work 63-hour weeks at a minimum.

In a statement the unions said that Department of Health files on pay showed that Brothers of Charity in Limerick was paying its chief executive around €103,000 a year while many of its staff did49 hours of sleepovers each fortnight.

The unions said that according to the Department of Health files the chief executive officer of St Michael’s House earned € 176,000 a year while many of its staff did an average of four 7-hour sleepovers per fortnight.

Unions said the files maintained that Stewarts Hospital in Dublin, which also depends heavily on sleepovers, paid its almost € 175,000 a year.

Impact national secretary Louise O’Donnell said the HSE and its agencies were claiming that the sleepover issue could not be resolved because of cost and resource constraints. “There appears to be no effective limit on pay costs for chief executives. Meanwhile managers order staff to work as many as seven sleepovers a fortnight, in flagrant breach of Irish and EU working time laws, for the princely sum of €3 an hour after tax,” she said.

Siptu official Paul Bell said the unions would now pursue their case in the Labour Court. "Sleepovers are essential to the care and safety of people with disabilities and young people in residential.

On Monday St Michael’s House said that the salary of its chief executive salary had been set at € 140,000 since the Haddington Road agreement was implemented. It said that previously it had been set at € 151,000.

Stewarts Hospital said the salary of the current chief executive was in compliance with official pay scales.