I work in a residential care home in a nearby village. I love the job. There are some unpleasant aspects of it (as in all care jobs), but they're far outweighed by the positive aspects. It's an industry I want to go into once I've done nurse training.
However, I'm staying for a total of around 25 minuites more than I'm actually paid for each shift. For instance, if I'm on from 2pm until 9pm, there will be changeover at 1.50pm, which in my book counts as work. That's 10 minuites that 'm not being paid for. I also usually don't leave until 9.15 time, which is 15 minuites that I'm not paid for. So that's 25 minuites every shift. I do 4 shifts a week on average. So I reckon that monthly, I'm losing around £27 in overtime that I theoretically should be paid. I say theoretically because my manager says that if we're not finished by 9pm (we have things that need to be done - pots, washing, residents ready for bed etc) then that's our problem. She also said that if she gets any more phone calls from other members of staff saying they've come onto a shift and things haven't been done, she'll 'rip our bloody heads off' and make us stay until midnight to get them done. Obviously that's not going to happen, but her attitude is obviously that if we can't get it done in time, we should stay until it's finished and not get paid for it. None of the other staff will stand up to this woman, so I've decided that I'm going to make a diary of the next 2 months and present both her and the owner of the business with a document detailing what time I came on shift, what time I left, how little tea I'm getting to drink for my £2.50 a week I have to pay (that's right, a minimum wage back breaking job and I'm paying the owner £2.50 a week so that I can have a cup of tea). I'm also going to photograph the sheet that's stuck on the rota which says "staff are required to arrive 10 minuites before the shift starts so that handover can take place".
Assuming that my manager and the owner just laugh in my face, what can I do? Any ideas? I'm not really very knowledgable on employment regulations and regulation bodies, so I have no idea where to start.
I'm also not happy that I'm only on £4.25 an hour, when other staff (over 21) are on £5.05 an hour for doing the same job. I'll be making a reference to an incident last week, whereby a resident got out of the fire exit, refused to come back in and so I had to walk with him (whilst he verbally abused me the whole time and I had to physically pull him out of the road because he thought he'd stand up to oncoming traffic three times - he's twice the size of me might I add) for almost an hour before we were picked up. The other staff just stayed inside, no-one had a car and a member of staff who wasn't even on duty had to collect us. We all do the same job and so should all be paid the same in my opinion. I know it's not the law, but it winds me up all the same.
I love the job. I'm obviously being exploited because of this, as are some of the other staff. It winds me up so much but I don't know what to do :(.
Thanks for reading. I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I know there's a lot of level headed folk on here so a couple of opinions on the whole thing would be greatly appreciated.
-Danny :)
