paid for travel to work?

oldtractor

my husband is a lorry driver he works for an agency doing temporary driving work they use an umberella firm called Apex to pay him. his contract of work is with this firm so I guess he technically works for them.
Should he be paid for travel to work as he doesnt go to an office but goes to wherever the agency direct him.he then picks up instructions from the firm wqhich want a driver and does a days work as per instructions. he is contracted out of the 48 hours work directive.

System

At a guess he is paid a flat day rate rather than hourly rate so it makes no difference

jobbingmusician

I think the real answer to this is 'no-one knows'. This is because no case law has been established yet. On the face of it, however, he would seem to be in the group of employees affected by last week's ruling.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34210002

ghostfinder

had a chat with my 'manager' about this,

he told me,

its not in effect yet and the UK is legally challenging it?

eebyegum

all agency drivers i know, including myself, are paid by the hour. so if a job is from 6am until 4 pm thats 10 hours pay minus any lunch breaks.
if it takes half an hour to get to and from that job from home then i would expect the agency to have to pay me that extra hour pay and obviously recharge the extra to the client.
the umbrella company is purely there as an independant payroll unit which is basically a legal tax loophole for the benefit of the driver and the agency, i use one myself!, the agency claims the full pay from the client for the hours worked then pays the money to the umbrella company minus the agencys commission. the umbrella company sorts the payslip and makes final payment to the driver minus its own commission.

oldtractor

thank you all especially eebyegum. it appears that he has the same working conditions as yourself. He is paid hourly.
He has asked his employer who doesnt know. There could be problems as he often works up to the maximum driving time in fact this evening someone has had to go and collect him due to running out of time. If travel top and from home is allowed then he'll be way over the legal driving limit its an hour there an hour back daily.

Takeaway_Addict

Its rather irrelivent if you are paid more than NMW, if it comes in then the hourly rates will become day rates to include the travel time and as long as its above NMW there is nothing you can do.

eebyegum

from my experience, in the case of agency lorry drivers anyway, it is usually impossible to guarantee a finishing time due to traffic/number of deliveries/unfamiliar route/etc etc, so a day rate will not work as the working day is uncalculable, otherwise how would the driver be paid his overtime. this type of job will always be paid by the hour by its nature.

LittleVoice

Takeaway_Addict wrote: »

Its rather irrelivent if you are paid more than NMW, if it comes in then the hourly rates will become day rates to include the travel time and as long as its above NMW there is nothing you can do.

This doesn't seem to be a problem about pay but about working time.


(If you are thinking about the recent European case, as I understand it, it was about working time not pay and specifically said it was not about pay.)

oldtractor

eebyegum wrote: »

from my experience, in the case of agency lorry drivers anyway, it is usually impossible to guarantee a finishing time due to traffic/number of deliveries/unfamiliar route/etc etc, so a day rate will not work as the working day is uncalculable, otherwise how would the driver be paid his overtime. this type of job will always be paid by the hour by its nature.

Exactly right.:T

Takeaway_Addict

LittleVoice wrote: »

This doesn't seem to be a problem about pay but about working time.


(If you are thinking about the recent European case, as I understand it, it was about working time not pay and specifically said it was not about pay.)

Fair point.