Contract cleaners: the Employment Regulation Order, transfers and travel

Contract cleaning is a sector with a legally binding minimum rate above the national minimum wage, set by an Employment Regulation Order made on the proposal of the Contract Cleaning Joint Labour Committee. It is also a sector where the client changes contractor every few years, where many workers do short shifts on several sites, and where a large share of the workforce is from outside Ireland. This guide covers the order, what happens to you when the contract moves to a new company, travel time, and how to enforce the order at the WRC. Your rights do not depend on your nationality or your permit; the work permit rights guide explains that in full.

What an employment regulation order is

A Joint Labour Committee is a Labour Court body with equal employer and worker representation for a sector. It proposes minimum pay and conditions; the Labour Court adopts the proposal; the Minister makes it as a statutory instrument; and from the commencement date the terms are implied into every contract of employment in the sector. A contract term that is less favourable is void. The JLC system was struck down by the High Court in 2011 and rebuilt by the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2012, and the contract cleaning order was one of the first remade under the new framework, with successive orders since.

The order covers employers whose business is the provision of cleaning services to clients at the clients' premises: offices, hospitals, schools, shopping centres, transport. Cleaners employed directly by the building owner (a hotel's own housekeeping staff, a hospital's own cleaners) are outside it and are on the minimum wage or their own employer's terms. The current order is on the Irish Statute Book and summarised on the WRC's ERO page; any new order is tracked on /changes.

The rate and the conditions

The order sets a minimum hourly rate for contract cleaning workers, usually with a further increase on a later date within the order's life. The rate is the rate in the current order: this site does not reproduce a figure it cannot verify against the instrument. It sits above the national minimum wage, which in 2026 is €14.15 an hour for a worker aged 20 or over, €12.74 at 19, €11.32 at 18 and €9.91 under 18. An employer in the sector who pays the minimum wage is in breach of the order.

The order also sets, in the terms the current instrument uses:

• The normal working week and the overtime rate for hours beyond it, and the rate for public holiday work.
• A sick pay scheme, which sits alongside the Sick Leave Act 2022's 5 days at 70% capped at €110; the scheme that is more favourable, taken as a whole, applies.
• Death-in-service cover.
• Rules on uniforms, protective clothing and the cost of them, which the employer cannot pass to you except where the order and your contract allow.

Many cleaners work short shifts, early mornings or evenings, on more than one contract. The order's rate applies to every hour, and the Protection of Employees (Part-Time Work) Act 2001 gives part-time cleaners the same treatment, pro rata, as full-time colleagues: annual leave at 8% of hours worked (or by the other two methods if greater), public holidays once you have worked 40 hours in the five weeks before the holiday, and the same hourly rate. If you are not rostered on the day a public holiday falls, you are owed one fifth of your normal weekly pay. The annual leave calculator applies all of this to your hours.

When the contract changes hands

Every few years the client puts the cleaning contract out to tender and a new contractor takes over. What happens to your job is governed by the European Communities (Protection of Employees on Transfer of Undertakings) Regulations 2003, usually called TUPE, and by the sector's practice.

The Regulations apply where an economic entity that retains its identity transfers from one employer to another. A change of contractor is not automatically a transfer in Irish law; the question is whether the entity (the organised grouping of people and assets doing the cleaning at that site) carried over. In a labour-intensive activity like cleaning, where there are few assets, the Court of Justice and the Irish courts and WRC have treated the new contractor's taking on a major part of the existing workforce, in numbers and skills, as a transfer. Where the new contractor takes on nobody and nothing, there may be no transfer.

If there is a transfer:

• Your contract moves to the new contractor on the same terms, with your service continuous, and the order's rate and conditions continue to apply.
• Most pension rights do not transfer, though the sector scheme the order requires applies to the new employer in its own right.
• Employee representatives (your union, or representatives elected for the purpose) must be informed and consulted at least 30 days before the transfer.
• The Regulations prohibit a dismissal because of the transfer itself, unless there is an economic, technical or organisational reason entailing changes in the workforce; the WRC looks at the real reason.
• You can refuse to transfer, but refusing is treated as a resignation unless the transfer would involve a substantial change to your detriment.

If there is no transfer, the outgoing contractor remains your employer and, with no site to place you on, may have to offer you another site or make you redundant. After 104 weeks' service the statutory sum is two weeks' pay per year plus one week, capped at €600 a week, tax-free; the redundancy calculator works it out. A refusal of a reasonable alternative site can affect the redundancy entitlement, so take advice before refusing.

In practice the incoming and outgoing contractors often agree that staff transfer, and the client's tender may require it. Ask both contractors in writing, before the changeover date, whether you are transferring and on what terms, and keep the replies. The TUPE guide covers the Regulations in detail.

Travel between sites

If you clean on more than one site for the same employer, time spent travelling between them during the working day, at the employer's direction, is working time under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 and counts towards your hours for the 48-hour average and your breaks. Whether it is paid, and at what rate, is a matter for the order and your contract: the Act defines working time, but the rate for it comes from the contract, and the minimum wage (and the order's rate) is checked over the pay reference period against all the hours that count as working time.

Travel from home to your first site and from your last site home is ordinarily not working time. Where you have no fixed site and are sent to different locations each day, the Court of Justice has treated the first and last journeys as working time for mobile workers, and the WRC has looked at cleaning cases on their facts. Keep a note of your travel and your start and finish times at each site; if the employer has no records, the WRC can expect it to disprove your account.

Breaks are the statutory 15 minutes after 4.5 hours and 30 minutes after 6, unpaid unless the contract says otherwise. A split shift (two hours in the morning and three in the evening) is lawful but each shift and the gap between them still have to respect the 11 hours' daily rest when added together across the day.

Contracts and hours

Your core terms (names, address, start date, pay, hours, place of work or that you work at various places, job title, probation) must be in writing within 5 days and the rest, including your sites and the notice of a shift where your pattern is unpredictable, within 1 month. A zero-hours contract that requires availability without guaranteeing hours is banned except for genuinely casual work, emergency cover or short-term relief; if you are sent home or given fewer hours than the contract names you are owed the lesser of three hours or 25% of the contract hours. After twelve months you can ask for a band of hours reflecting what you actually worked. The contract checker lists what must be in writing.

Enforcing the order at the WRC

Being paid below the order is an unlawful deduction of the amount properly payable under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 and a contravention of the Industrial Relations Acts. The complaint is made online to the WRC within six months of each pay day, with no fee, and each pay day is its own contravention; the adjudicator can extend to twelve months for reasonable cause. The WRC can order the arrears and compensation. WRC inspectors enforce EROs directly and can inspect records without naming you, which matters in a sector where workers often fear being taken off a site.

Write first, with your hours, the rate paid and the rate in the order. Keep the letter. Dismissal for raising the order needs no minimum service for an unfair dismissal claim, and penalisation for a complaint is itself a contravention. The deadline checker gives you the date.

Union

SIPTU represents contract cleaning workers and sits on the Contract Cleaning Joint Labour Committee that proposes each order, so it knows the current rate and the detail. Membership brings representation at the WRC at no charge. See which union covers you.

Where this leaves you

Your floor as a contract cleaner is the rate in the current Employment Regulation Order, not the national minimum wage beneath it, and the order's conditions on overtime, sick pay and uniforms are part of your contract. The minimum wage checker gives you the statutory rate for your age and the shortfall over any period; take the order's figure from the instrument on the Irish Statute Book or the WRC's ERO page and apply the same arithmetic to your hours. When the contract changes hands, ask both contractors in writing whether you transfer. Security workers have a similar floor under their own order, and construction has a sectoral employment order.