In 2018 Mencap, the learning disability charity with an unappealing name, took the government to court. Mencap wanted to challenge an earlier ruling on whether or not sleep shifts count as work, for the purposes of calculating the national minimum wage. They won their case and now, thanks to them, sleep shifts are no longer legally recognised as work. So if you sleep as part of your job, your boss doesn’t have to pay you for it.
I am lucky; I haven’t worked a sleep shift for years — they do not involve a lot of actual sleep. In my old job in a dementia unit I would work a late shift from 3pm-10pm, at 6am I would start getting residents washed and dressed, and between 10pm and 6am I was nominally “asleep” and therefore not getting paid. Even if I was getting paid, this would still be a breach of Working Time Regulations (something that most care workers opt out of when we sign our contracts).
Hull SolFed held another anti-workfare ‘demo’ on Saturday the 20th, this time a mobile one. Based on suggestions on the Boycott Workfare website, we held a walk a shame through hull town center, stopping at nine different workfare providers, forming a picket outside each store, handing out leaflets and talking to shoppers. We also had some musical accompaniment, which helped to draw attention to the picket and kept the day more interesting.
