- Conference
- 2024 National Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 7 December 2023
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes with concern the growing issue of employers passing on costs to their staff. Uniforms, mandatory training, shadowing, criminal record checks, professional accreditations, carparking and using a car to travel are all essential for staff to be able to do their jobs, provide a good service and keep patients and the community safe.
However far too many workers are being charged for the very essentials they need to go to work. This can add up to thousands per year, leaving workers out of pocket just for doing their jobs. For example, UNISON’s report, “Driven out of work”, shows that the average NHS worker on Agenda for Change mileage rates who drives two hours per day is losing more than £6000 per year because they are not reimbursed for the actual cost of driving.
Conference highlights that the biggest costs are often passed onto those least able to afford them. Recent UNISON research on criminal record checks shows that more than four in five (85%) of public service workers requiring criminal record checks earn below the average wage in the UK, with two in five of them seeing their wages deducted to pay for it. Similarly, UNISON’s research on mileage rates shows that public service workers required to use a car for their job, and therefore left out of pocket by out-of-date mileage rates, earn on average just £22,499 – significantly below the UK average. Conference is concerned that the costs of working are pushing essential workers into financial hardship and poverty.
Conference is clear, it is wrong for employers to pass costs onto their staff. When something is essential for a job to be done well, safely or to the employer’s standards, it should always be the employer who foots the bill.
Conference notes that it doesn’t have to be this way, and applauds the efforts of activists across the country to challenge unfair costs of working. For example, North Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Health Branch successfully forced their trust to reverse a decision to introduce DBS check fees for staff.
Conference therefore calls on the Health Service Group Executive to::
1)Work with Regions and Branches to collect evidence of the financial hardship incurred by our members working in health as a result of the costs of working being passed onto workers
2)Call on UNISON representatives on the NHS Staff Council to raise this issue as a matter of urgency.
3)Work with other service groups impacted by the unfair costs of working to promote national campaigns on the cost of working.
4)Include fair mileage, criminal record checks, uniform, training, shadowing, carparking, accreditations and other essential costs of working in campaigns such as Earnings Max and Fair Pay for Patient Care.
5)Work with UNISON College to develop training for activists and branches to challenge unfair costs of working in their workplaces.
6)Work where possible with the NEC, Labour Link and the Campaign Fund to call for legislative change in Westminster and devolved administrations, preventing employers from passing on essential workplace costs to their staff.
7)Undertake further investigation into whether unfair costs of working leave low income and insecure workers earning below legal minimum levels.