Ebbie, is there an organisation, such as AgeUK here, which could act on an anonymous alert and initiate an enquiry? If you wished, you could inform them of the situation and leave it to them to take action without your name being mentioned. I feel very strongly that exploitation of this sort should be dealt with by the authorities. If not, people will be employed on illegal terms more and more, and their conditions will deteriorate as their employers realise they can get away with it. The illegal system in your retirement house has already meant the curtailment of your time for lunch. And there are Health and Safety issues such as not enough breaks, risks due to rushing through the work etc. I'm not telling you what to do, but I can say, if I lived there, I'd find some way of notifying the authorities anonymously to provoke an investigation. The Staff may not want to 'rock the boat' but that's exactly how these abuses are able to continue.