Forced to stay to complete job

ferry

Just wanted to run this past you lot
Can a Director force a team to stay behind after normal working hours to complete a task at short notice?.
I overheard a call centre team I work alongside being told "no one leaves until 500 calls are made" - around 3 hours before closing time.
Apart from the threatening way in which it was said is it actually legal?

F x

HappyMJ

Forced against their will. No. You are contracted to work the scheduled hours. You can walk out at your finishing time if you wanted to.

If however you did walk out on the dot of finishing time then don't expect to be keeping your job for too long. If everyone could walk out at exactly the same time then your individual job is less "at risk". You would need to change the culture of work in that particular workplace and it's very difficult to do when so many workers aren't willing to take a risk as they value keeping their jobs and wages so much.

prowla

I think there are many jobs where people work beyond their paid hours, and companies & managers do exploit that.

From the perspective of this one, I would guess that the said Director decided that people weren't keeping to targets/plan and made the point well before the end of shift.

Do you know if they achieved the 500 calls?

ferry

No idea will find out tomorrow. Hope it went well they're a good team

Andy_L

Depends on your contract. Some say that overtime can be compulsory. Although sometimes with caveats about notice or asking for volunteers first

prowla

Andy_L wrote: »

Depends on your contract. Some say that overtime can be compulsory. Although sometimes with caveats about notice or asking for volunteers first

I guess then the question is whether it's paid or not...

sangie595

prowla wrote: »

I guess then the question is whether it's paid or not...

Assuming the pay is NMW then yes - overtime should be paid. If it is above NMW then provided the hours do not take the total wage below NMW it would not need to be paid unless there was a right to paid overtime.

Which would probably be rather irrelevant given the practices of many call centres. The question of whether they can legally make you work longer hours or would have to pay any such hours would be secondary to whether you still have a job at the end of the day, and for many people, still having a job would take priority over other considerations.

[Deleted User]

Here's a quote from one of my bosses:

"It's been noted who goes home a 5 o'clock. Anyone who doesn't work until 7pm can expect to go to the top of the redundancy list."

usefulmale

jack_pott wrote: »

Here's a quote from one of my bosses:

"It's been noted who goes home a 5 o'clock. Anyone who doesn't work until 7pm can expect to go to the top of the redundancy list."

From a slave labour company like that, I would welcome the redundancy.

robatwork

jack_pott wrote: »

Here's a quote from one of my bosses:

"It's been noted who goes home a 5 o'clock. Anyone who doesn't work until 7pm can expect to go to the top of the redundancy list."

Well that's a ridiculous attitude from a "boss".

There's a huge difference between expecting someone to stay beyond 5 because, for example, they are in the middle of a phone call which will take another 15 mins to sort out, or systematically expecting staff to work 25% overtime without pay.

I suggest you leave at 5pm on the dot, get made redundant and start looking for a new job now.

27col

Aren't I glad that I retired many years ago.