Issue with work hours

mattcanary

fufu_banterwaite wrote: »

I always thought he was a centre forward?

You may well be right.


I'll say Raymond de Waard - but no-one would have heard of him!

Takeaway_Addict

smifffy1989 wrote: »

I would leave and then see an employment solicitor for constructive dismissal on the basis that you are essentially a slave.
If you have legal expenses cover on your household insurance it will probably pick up the bill for the legal case. Worth a phone call.

The OP IMO would lose, they've not raised any grievances officially and the chances of winning are quite low.

Better to get a job and move on.

getmore4less

Opt back in
working time regs then apply

if you never opted out then you are already over.

how much holiday do you get?

mrjam

getmore4less wrote: »

Opt back in
working time regs then apply

if you never opted out then you are already over.

how much holiday do you get?

20 days excluding bank holidays and christmas has to be taken out of entitlement too, essentially i get 10 days off a year if i want to have bank holidays and christmas off (i dont have a choice, we're shut then anyway) so i HAVE to and am FORCED to take these as "holidays".

Another bug bear of mine and complete p!55 take!

amiehall

Why don't you write and withdraw your WTD opt out. That would limit your legal average working week to 48 hours. If they tried to dismiss you for working "only" your 48 hours, you would have protection under the law.

If you never did sign an opt out then I would seek legal advice immediately as your employer would find the case hard to defend especially as they seem to have been keeping detailed records of your actual working hours.

mattcanary

I think that you in the eyes of the law, you have agreed to work the extra hours above the 48 hours limit as part of your contract if you don't object to them at the outset (or shortly after you start working them). I might be wrong about this, though.


I agree thought that you could still write a letter to your employer stating that you do not wish to work more than 48 hours per week on average going forward (I think this is worked out as an average over 13 weeks?)

suse*

Just to backup the OP all the people saying it is impossible have obviously not worked in IT. You can't just turn a website / server etc off in the middle of the day people get annoyed at that, so you have to do updates at weird times. If those updates have been rushed in and don't work you don't have a choice but to keep working until it is fixed, even if this means no sleep etc.

Once you get into the habbit of working that many hours your life can woosh by so you don't realise 2 years have gone past that quickly, as you don't have weekends any more as a frame of reference.

This is very common in the IT industry especially if you work oncall or are doing a lot of updates or a major project.

I feel for you a lot, but just look at it now that you have all that experince. It might be worth looking at contracting roles as well as perm going forward too. Just make sure any contract has an hourly rate on top of your day rate to cover extra overtime this way

Once you have lived this you get used to making sure your contract covers everything next time. Including things like standby pay which is just they can call you and you login within 1/2 hour which means it isn't as high a rate as working but they understand they are putting you out as you can't stray too far from home.

getmore4less

mattcanary wrote: »

I think that you in the eyes of the law, you have agreed to work the extra hours above the 48 hours limit as part of your contract if you don't object to them at the outset (or shortly after you start working them). I might be wrong about this, though.


I agree thought that you could still write a letter to your employer stating that you do not wish to work more than 48 hours per week on average going forward (I think this is worked out as an average over 13 weeks?)

Why guess if you don't know things.

Here is the relevant act so you can research the correct answers.
.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/1833/made/data.pdf

getmore4less

mrjam wrote: »

20 days excluding bank holidays and christmas has to be taken out of entitlement too, essentially i get 10 days off a year if i want to have bank holidays and christmas off (i dont have a choice, we're shut then anyway) so i HAVE to and am FORCED to take these as "holidays".

Another bug bear of mine and complete p!55 take!

Not clear is that 10 days + 8 for the BH or not?

liney

mrjam wrote: »

20 days excluding bank holidays and christmas has to be taken out of entitlement too, essentially i get 10 days off a year if i want to have bank holidays and christmas off (i dont have a choice, we're shut then anyway) so i HAVE to and am FORCED to take these as "holidays".

Another bug bear of mine and complete p!55 take!

So do you have a total of 28 days off work per year?

Ie you have a Christmas shut down and BH's where you do not work, plus the ability to book around 10 floating days?