A business push to count “sleepovers” as breaks in care industries could result in “nightmare” 28-hour shifts without penalty rates, unions have warned.
This week the Fair Work Commission will hear a case brought by the Australian Industry Group asking it to change the safety net for care industries to clarify that hours worked before or after a sleepover count as separate shifts.
But unions including the Australian Services Union have warned that sleepovers – in which an employer requires an employee to be responsible for a particular client and sleep overnight at a premises away from their home – are not proper rest breaks.
The change would affect people like Bernie, a 58-year-old social worker in out-of-home care for children who has worked in that industry for 39 years.
Bernie, who did not want her last name used, is paid a flat rate of $57 for an eight-hour sleepover, which is usually part of a total 20-hour shift, with eight hours worked the day before and four hours the day after.
But Bernie insisted that a sleepover doesn’t mean eight hours of rest.
“Every night you are getting up to the young people because there’s complex trauma, so … they don’t have regular sleep patterns, so they could be up all night and to the early hours of morning, and you’re expected to react and be available,” he said.
“Anyone in the industry will tell you there is no break. I did one on Friday night: I was up until 3am. So then I’m back on shift at 7am.”
The Ai Group proposal could result in a work pattern totalling 28 hours: a 10-hour shift one day, an eight-hour sleepover, followed immediately by another 10-hour day.
Bernie said it was “very difficult” to fill the sleepover shifts as it was, and this would only become harder under the proposal.
“I wouldn’t be able to do it, honestly. We’ve got people who have got families, to be away from your family for 28 hours is a really hard ask. I think I would leave the industry.”
Bernie also described “fatigue” as a “work health and safety lawsuit waiting to happen”.
“Driving young people on no sleep, you could have an accident … You’re not mentally fit enough to deal with challenging behaviours.”
In its application the AiGroup claimed that the change “would result in a fair safety net” and that “many employees wish to perform work” in that manner.
The changes “would have a positive impact on business, including on productivity and employment costs”, it said.
“Making the variation will … give clarity and certainty to employers that they can implement these arrangements without incurring a disproportionate shift penalty or requiring the routine performance of significant periods of overtime.”
AiGroup also argued the changes “would facilitate greater quality of care for clients”, enabling “an employee to provide care to a client before they go to bed and when they awake the following day”.
The ASU New South Wales and ACT secretary, Angus McFarland, said: “The business lobby is hellbent on making sleepover shifts a nightmare for community and disability support workers.
“It’s outrageous that employers are attempting to drag the pay and conditions of dedicated sleepover care workers backwards,” he said.
“Community and disability support workers who stay overnight at their workplaces receive overtime pay if they work more than 10 hours before or after their sleepover but the big business lobby wants to double the hours required before overtime applies.
“Effectively, employers want workers to be on shift for more than a whole day for less pay.”
The Australian Industry Group chief executive, Innes Willox, said it was “not seeking a radical change to the current award terms or to take anything away from anyone”.
The application “seeks to address a technical anomaly in the wording of the award that has resulted in various provisions being controversially interpreted by some in a way which is unexpectedly and unsustainably generous to employees”, he said.
Willox accused unions of “seeking to opportunistically seize on a novel reading of the award that would deliver workers a windfall gain”.
