Doing Overtime Due To Perpetual Offending Of Another employee.

Meestapink

I have over the past three years racked up several hours (maybe even shifts worth) of unpaid overtime due to a certain employees inability to get to work on time. I keep repeatedly being told this is due to the official shift timings being normal 6-2 ,2-10 etc . Recently A new biometric clocking system was installed and the clock in times (which I believe to have being accepted as custom and practice are 0530-1230 ,1230-2000 and 2000-0530. These times were posted on a notice next to the clocking machine. Do these now become an unwritten change of contract? I recently had to stop on due to operational demands an extra hour or so due to this employees lateness but I am told as the official hours are 6-2 etc I cannot claim extra pay?

The email I sent to the boss was as follows (all names have been erased to protect privacy.

Mr Y,
Further to our text message conversation (all of which I have saved) I am disappointed at your response towards me getting paid for stopping on. As we are both aware that Mr X's timekeeping at best is abysmal.Being late for a shift on which you are attending a disciplinary interview just underlines this.
I am not sure at what time the Kronos system has me down as clocking out, (I left site at quarter to 2) but I do expect to be paid at time and a half for this period which is MY TIME. To quote the old adage of "6-2 mate!" is simply not acceptable. All I ask for is a fair days pay for a fair days work and I don't see anything unreasonable about that. None of us are here for the love of it Mr Y and I am sure in my shoes you would feel exactly the same. I understand that Mr X had to stay back to make his time up, which is right. However I have overstayed my time by over an hour and deserve to recompensated as such.
I trust this will happen regardless of your initial response.
As we were working at the time lets remember who was doing who the favour here!
I would of course not jeopardise production and thus was forced to remain in post until such time as Mr X finally decided to turn up. This issue needs sorting once and for all Mr Y, I must have accrued a few shift's worth of extra time during the last 3 years due to his inability to be punctual and it is now at a point where I am no longer going to tolerate the "It's Mr X" standing joke, which is what it is to be fair.
I like Mr X and think he is a good lad and good at his job too, he freely admits his timekeeping is awful, I do not know the answer but as stated above I as an individual am no longer going to tolerate the incumberance of my time not being rewarded by the company.
I have copied XXX in on this email as you can see. I trust this matter can be resolved amicably and financially.

---

Can anybody shed any light on my position please, I have signed an overtime waiver to work in excess of 48 hours however this does not stipulate that this could be unpaid. Any Ideas folks ?

Cheers

Meestapink

Hammyman

Without knowing what the job is, its hard to advise but if the hours you do divided by the wage you get takes it below national minimum wage, your employer is breaking the law - for example, you get paid weekly and get £250 for 40hrs but then have to do 50hrs but don't get paid extra, that would take your weekly wage below the NMW.

As regards the hours on the biometric clocking in, they don't change anything unless you mean that you have to clock in by 5.30 and out by 12.30 in which they do. Unless you file a grievance, you will be deemed to have accepted them by continuing.

On a positive note, at least said employees poor time-keeping will now be obvious.

DVardysShadow

I think you missed stating the core argument.

This is that if you are supposed to work 'custom and practice' hours, you should get overtime for working outside of custom and practice hours. But if they will only pay you overtime outside of contractual hours, they must only expect you to work contractual hours. They need to make their choice.

Googlewhacker

Whilst I understand your frustration your email is probably one of the best example of how NOT to write one.

Whilst I agree with you in that you should be getting paid your letter is aweful and if anything will get the bosses back up and mark you down as a troublemaker.

Things like 'As we were working at the time lets remember who was doing who the favour here!' really do not go down well.

DVardysShadow

Googlewhacker wrote: »

Whilst I understand your frustration your email is probably one of the best example of how NOT to write one.

Whilst I agree with you in that you should be getting paid your letter is aweful and if anything will get the bosses back up and mark you down as a troublemaker.

Things like 'As we were working at the time lets remember who was doing who the favour here!' really do not go down well.

At the end of the day, it is a production job. Anyone is entitled to vent with a situation like this - and office politics should not feature as strongly as for an office type role. And in truth, it creates less trouble than raising a grievance. Although I don't think it is necessarily the best email to send, any manager who is going to get his knickers in a twist over this rather than recognise and deal with the underlying issue would be a problem in his own right already.

I'm generalising a bit, but I tend to think that production environments are actually more understanding of the need to respect working hours than office environments are.

SarEl

Googlewhacker wrote: »

Whilst I understand your frustration your email is probably one of the best example of how NOT to write one.

Whilst I agree with you in that you should be getting paid your letter is aweful and if anything will get the bosses back up and mark you down as a troublemaker.

Things like 'As we were working at the time lets remember who was doing who the favour here!' really do not go down well.

I rather hate to say it, but I agree. This wouldn't be the way I would advise someone to write a letter.

Notwithstanding the issue regarding hours and NMW (which is correct), it is actually a fiction that overtime must be paid. Whether or not it is paid depends on your contractual conditions, and many workers have contracts which tie them to certain amounts of necessary unpaid overtime. I'm not saying that's right - just that it's a fact and it happens. Equally, unless yours is one of these contracts, then no employer can physically force you to stay in work beyond the end of your shift, which could be a good negotiating position - but unfortunately the wording of your letter now leaves little negotiating room.

I'd also have to say that even if your contract doesn't stipulate an amount of unpaid overtime, by accepting this situation over such a long period of time, you have effectively established "custom and practice" that in these circumstances overtime is unpaid - and that's as binding a part of the employment contract now as anything that was written down - if the employer wants to play it that way.

I am not sure that at this stage, having played your hand, there is much advise anyone here can now give you because it depends on how the employer decides to play this. If you are lucky, they may agree with you and overlook the tone. If not they may come back in an equally belligerent way. Perhaps at that stage there may be something more that could be said, but right now the only thing left is to speculate on what they maight say, and that isn't helpful.

SarEl

DVardysShadow wrote: »

At the end of the day, it is a production job. Anyone is entitled to vent with a situation like this - and office politics should not feature as strongly as for an office type role. And in truth, it creates less trouble than raising a grievance. Although I don't think it is necessarily the best email to send, any manager who is going to get his knickers in a twist over this rather than recognise and deal with the underlying issue would be a problem in his own right already.

I'm generalising a bit, but I tend to think that production environments are actually more understanding of the need to respect working hours than office environments are.

And whilst I agree with the sentiment that production type jobs may be more "blunt" and to the point in terms of venting, their managers are also rather more blunt, and instead of "managing workforce change" or "redeployment opportunities" tend to use the term "sling your hook"! It really depends on how they take the bluntness of their employees - it isn't always seen as "salt of the earth", more like "annoying little ****"!

DVardysShadow

SarEl wrote: »

And whilst I agree with the sentiment that production type jobs may be more "blunt" and to the point in terms of venting, their managers are also rather more blunt, and instead of "managing workforce change" or "redeployment opportunities" tend to use the term "sling your hook"! It really depends on how they take the bluntness of their employees - it isn't always seen as "salt of the earth", more like "annoying little ****"!

Personally, I prefer the bluntness of a production environment to the smarminess of the office - you tend to know more where you stand and see the knife coming in front of you. As I read the OP, it is a continuous process type of environment. There is more at stake in these environments, such that 'sling your hook' is less likely to be the first response to a long standing employee [although recent employees might get the response if they do not fit the environment].

Any manager with a modicum of intelligence should be able to pick the bones out of this. OP has expressed it as a gripe about overtime, but it is really a gripe about a colleague's time keeping. Yes, there are risks that the manager is a fool, but I do think that the boneheaded idiots don't get so many opportunities to manage in continuous production as they might in a call centre.

Googlewhacker

DVardysShadow wrote: »

At the end of the day, it is a production job. Anyone is entitled to vent with a situation like this - and office politics should not feature as strongly as for an office type role. And in truth, it creates less trouble than raising a grievance. Although I don't think it is necessarily the best email to send, any manager who is going to get his knickers in a twist over this rather than recognise and deal with the underlying issue would be a problem in his own right already.

I'm generalising a bit, but I tend to think that production environments are actually more understanding of the need to respect working hours than office environments are.

You can vent but not send a crappy email to your boss, the OP should have been more tactile in how they went across in writing their email.

Yes it maybe less hassle than a grievance but a tactile email would be less hassle than the one written by the OP IMO

Zazen999

Perhaps it would have been better to ask for advice before writing and sending the letter....all this will do is to get the bosses back up.

DVardysShadow

Googlewhacker wrote: »

the OP should have been more tactile in how they went across in writing their email.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Tactile is the last thing you should ever be with your boss.