Sainsburys Weekend overtime payment advice

bigup

Hi,

Wondering if anyone can provide some advice on the following issue for me: my father works for sainsburys and for the last 5 years or so whenever he have worked overtime he has been paid time and half.

he works four days a week including saturday, and when he was called for overtime on a monday he got paid time and half. But now a new personnel administrator has come in and has stopped these payments claiming that as he works four days a week, any work done on saturday after 12pm falls under sunday which is not counted as part of the week, so his hours are cut off after 12pm and this means that he works 32 hours, and the remaining 7 hours come under any overtime that he does, so he shouldnt get paid for time and half under overtime.

The contracted hours are 39 hours.

Can they claim this to be right? apparently this is the correct payment method now for any new starters, but as he has been there a while can they just change the way he is paid without any formal change of contracts etc? we dont know if this issue is mentioned in his employment contract as we dont have a copy of it.

Wondering if anyone who works for sainsubrys has any insight? thanks.

crazy_guy

bigup wrote: »

Hi,

Wondering if anyone can provide some advice on the following issue for me: my father works for sainsburys and for the last 5 years or so whenever he have worked overtime he has been paid time and half.

he works four days a week including saturday, and when he was called for overtime on a monday he got paid time and half. But now a new personnel administrator has come in and has stopped these payments claiming that as he works four days a week, any work done on saturday after 12pm falls under sunday which is not counted as part of the week, so his hours are cut off after 12pm and this means that he works 32 hours, and the remaining 7 hours come under any overtime that he does, so he shouldnt get paid for time and half under overtime.

The contracted hours are 39 hours.

Can they claim this to be right? apparently this is the correct payment method now for any new starters, but as he has been there a while can they just change the way he is paid without any formal change of contracts etc? we dont know if this issue is mentioned in his employment contract as we dont have a copy of it.

Wondering if anyone who works for sainsubrys has any insight? thanks.

Hey though i'm a bit confused with how they are calculating the hours, i used to work for sainsburys and just because the new starters are treated a certain way this doesnt mean your father does, they have no right in changing it.

Sainsburys has the habit in continually cutting the benefits of new starts, while i was there for 2 years, double time was reduced pay and half, and now standard pay......wage even cut, when i was there i was getting more than a new manager!! So yeah they can't just change it due to the new starters being treated that way.

Bean_Counter

Does your father have a contract of employment, or even the offer letter he received when she started? In fact anything that might detail what his hours and rates of pay are?

I doubt whether Sansburys can artibrarily change his pay stucture without consultation at the very minimum.

tyllwyd

I think your father needs to start by asking to see a copy of his contract of employment, and see what it says there.

I'm a bit confused about what his hours are. Are you saying that he works 7 hours from 12pm on Saturday to 7am on Sunday? There are additional rules covering night workers and Sunday workers - is his employer complying with those?

daveboy

Sunday isn't counted as overtime at time and a half, as there is a premium paid for Sunday working - they won't pay time and a half and the premium.

I had the misfortune of working for this company....I was doing 39 hours and could have worked a Sunday as well if they needed me to. They were hot on not wanting to pay people time and a half overtime as it hit the margins too much - probably showed up their bad scheduling in the paperwork they keep in the personnel department.

Reading what you've said, he will get paid a Sunday premium between 12 and 7.

I remember Sainsbury's 'buying out' a lot of peoples contracts a couple of years ago, where they paid a lump sum but that would have meant reduced premiums being paid per hour. Did your father agree to this?

Sainsbury's are a crap employer, their pay isn't great and everyone seems to be on different rates. When they got rid of the Christmas bonus that was the message for me that they didn't give a toss about their employees.

anniewoo

I work for Sainsbury's,16 hours a week and I know the overtime rates for Sundays have changed recently.

Sunday is the only day I ever do overtime because it is time and a half and this still applies to people who have been there for some time but apparently any new people starting from now on will not get extra for Sundays,just the standard rate.

As your father has been there for a number of years,I wouldn't have thought they can suddenly change his rates of pay,the new overtime rates only apply to new starters and I don't see how Saturday afternoon can fall under Sunday.

daveboy

I took 12pm to possibly mean he works overnight, there is ambiguity there in the opening post. Did you mean 12am?

Whatever the ins and outs, the company is constantly trying to squeeze money out of its employees and doesn't care.

LittleVoice

I'd use the phrases of either 12 midnight or 12 noon.

As "am" is ante(before)-meridian and "pm" is post(after)-meridian and the meridian is noon, you can't be either 12 before or after. The 24-hour clock makes life even simpler.

Apologies to those who hate pedants!

bigup

Hi, many thanks for all the replies.

His contract of employment states that he is to work 39 hours a week.

He works tuesday, wednesday, friday and saturday (all nights) from 9pm to 7am.

If he works overtime e.g. on monday, the new payroll lady says that the hours worked on monday do not get time and a half because...

she says all work he does on sunday (12am- 7am on sunday) is not included in a normal working week, and so any other hours he does for overtime is added on to the 32 hours he has done upto 12am on sunday morning.

We argue how can this be right, because this would mean that he is never doing a full 39 hours a week.

looks like we will have to argue this one through. seems too silly to comprehend.

Biggles

There is a kind of logic to what they say, ie that he doesn't get enhanced pay for overtime till he's worked 39 un-enhanced hours (the 7 on Sun am are presumably automatically enhanced). I don't know what's 'normal' in those circumstances.

But it looks like the issue is more their changing of his terms of employment without consultation. If he hasn't got a copy of his original contract of employment, he needs to ask for one before arguing any further.

bigup

hi, why would sunday be automatically enhanced?