Trade Unions lodge complaint over ‘excessive’ working week

Trade unions representing residential staff looking after children, the elderly and others have lodged an official complaint with the European Commission over excessive working hours.

It has been claimed that some staff offering residential care are working 63-hour weeks, way above the legal maximum of 48 hours.

Impact and Siptu have lodged the complaint and said health employers and management in some cases were continually breaching the 1993 EU Working Time Directive and were also failing to respect a decade-old European Court of Justice ruling on working time.