Possible unfair practice at work

Volga

I am a student and to make money to supplement my studies I work part time in a bar near the university, normally between 7 and 12 hours a week. Each week there is a new rota (the hours and times vary each week).

Sometimes people are down on the rota as finishing at 12:30/1:30 which is when the pub is closed (pub closes at 12/1am and cleaning up is supposed to take half an hour). However, cleaning up never takes half an hour, and every time it takes an extra 45 mins/1 hour to finish cleaning up. On one occasion it took us nearly two hours because there were only 2 of us doing it, and we had to wait for the manager to come and check on our work.

I have asked the manager whether we are paid for this extra, non-rota work and was informed that no, we are not as the cleaning up is expected to take only half an hour and if we take longer than that it's because we're too slow. To me this sounds unfair as we aren't going slowly or sitting on our asses, we are working.

Is there any documentation online or an official website I can look at which may make this clear (have already searched on the direct.gov site and couldn't find anything).

Thanks for any advice you may be able to give.:o

Conor_3

Phone ACAS but if they're not paying you, it may breach national minimum wage laws.

Sadly though, the truth of the matter is that if you kick up too much of a fuss, although you may win, you may end up without the job and as you're employed under a year, you have no rights if they decide to let you go so there needs to be a bit of care taken about how you go about this.

pinkshoes

They should really pay you for your extra hours, but in reality there's probably 100s of other students willing to do the work, if not those who have been made redundant, so personally I'd put up and shut up rather than risk being out of a job!

Fair? no! But life isn't fair!

nzmegs

I had a similar situation when i worked in a shop. We had to clean up and wait until the cashing up was done in the evening. This was an unpaid 15-30 minutes each night.

I got around it by doing the cleaning and tidy in the last 30 mins of my shift wherever possible and leaving as quickly as i could. Perhaps you could try to share the tasks in the evning with your work mates. Ie one serving last orders while the other starts the cleaning up. Is this possible? Could some of the clean up be saved for the morning staff?

Volga

It's not really the waiting around for the cashing up, the cleaning is the thing that takes the time, normally the cashing up is finished well before we're done cleaning. No we can't leave it for the morning people because then they'd have to do it, and the bar needs to be ready for opening in the morning. I don't resent having to do the cleaning, I just resent not being paid for it.

We all do the cleaning up together anyway, and everything is shared out equally, we start doing little things as early as we can while the bar is open, making sure all the glasses are washed etc, making sure we've stocked up but there's only so much you can do while there's still customers to be served...

robpw2

you should try working in mcdonalds .... the one i worked in you were rotad on till 12:30 you were lucky to finish before 3am as cleaning took so long