Articles

Daily Average Agreements for Minimum Wage

16/12/2015

After April 6th 2015, legislation will be changed concerning the daily average agreements for the minimum wage. This could have repercussions for live-in carers who are undertaking unmeasured work.

For NMW purposes there are four different types of work: time work, salaried hours work, output work and unmeasured work.

An employer must pay an unmeasured worker either every hour worked in an agreed pay reference period or the specific amount of time that has been written in a daily average agreement. Therefore, if you are a live-in carer make sure that these rules are being applied to you.

The daily average agreement is a written agreement which stipulates the average time that you are likely to take to fulfill your role, as long as you are able to conduct your duties according to the full amount of time allocated by your contract. For example, a worker might work an average of 6 hours within an 8 hour period.

For the document to be legally valid it must:

* Stipulate the daily average amount of hours that you will likely spend undertaking your allocated tasks.

* Be drawn up before the start of the pay reference period to which it relates.

* Be signed by both you and your employer.

If this document exists and is signed by both parties then you must be legally paid the daily average hours that has been discerned for each day worked.

If however this agreement does not exist then instead you must be paid for each hour worked in the pay reference period.

If a legal daily average agreement exists but you are only available for a part of the agreed time on any given day, the ascertained hours form the basis for calculating the hours worked.

It is imperative that the ascertained hours must be a genuine average.  The employer is responsible for providing evidence to prove the authenticity of the average that has been calculated. Failure to do so will make the daily average agreement null and void.

The daily average agreement is related to the national minimum wage and has no bearing on your contract.

Calculating the hours of unmeasured work under a 'daily average' agreement.

To calculate the number of hours of unmeasured work done in the pay reference period - for example one week - when there is a daily average agreement, you should:

   Confirm the agreed daily average number of hours per day – for example, five hours a day - and the number of hours you are required to be available for work on a full working day, say 12 hours

Next, you need to multiply the agreed daily average hours by the number of days when you were in fact available for work for the full number of hours contemplated by the contract - say four days: 5 hours x 4 days = 20 hours.

If you are only available for part of the day then the hours ought to be adjusted accordingly. If you are only available for 6 hours a day then in the above example the hours would be reduced to 2.5.

Written By:

Daniel James
www.danieljamesbio.com
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