6 Day Working Week :(

ceetp

Hi Moneysaver199,
My contract says "Hours of work are worked on a rota basis and will be between 35-42.5 hours a week dependent on the shifts in that week".
I signed up to a salary amount of £16,000 per annum.

Thank you for your well wishes.

theoretica

PasturesNew wrote: »

I doubt they'd let you off - because that'd mean all the others would end up with no weekends off as they'd have to cover those weekends, so that's a non-starter.

I don't think the OP minds working weekends, so perhaps would be willing to do every Saturday in exchange for Mondays off.
Everyone has the right to request flexible working after 26 weeks in the job - but employers may say no if they don't think it fits business needs and from what you say of trying to sort out a rota system they likely would say that.

scott_lithgows

Did my first 16 years at work Monday to Saturday every week.started at 43 hours per week then 41.5,only went to a 5 day week when hours went to 40 hours per week.
Only bright side was I saved a fortune being unable to go out on a Friday night,whole workforce were camped out in the pub after Saturday finishing

Moneysaver199

ceetp wrote: »

Hi Moneysaver199,
My contract says "Hours of work are worked on a rota basis and will be between 35-42.5 hours a week dependent on the shifts in that week".
I signed up to a salary amount of £16,000 per annum.

Thank you for your well wishes.

I don't think it sounds very clear, does it. Basically it says you could be working 35 or 42.5, whatever amount of hours they like really between those figures. They should have given an average figure maybe? I used to work shifts but although I did 48 hours one week and 36 the next, I was contracted as 42 hour average (and was paid 42 hours every week). I didn't have a problem at the time working an average 42 hours, however I then moved to a 35 hour week (non shift work) and felt a huge difference. Not sure I could go back now. Easier when younger I suppose.

Hope you find something better soon, doesn't sound like there's much you can do with the contract being so unclear.

sangie595

I think you need to be careful. Whether or not you were clear, you know what the working patterns are and what the wage is for those hours. If you ask for flexible working, just for that reason, they are going to say no. And the reason they will say no has already been explained by them - it isn't manageable and you know that yourself. The reasons why it isn't manageable are not relevant, but in the employers case I would say no too - they can't manage the business without these shift patterns and the hours as they are, and it would be pretty bad precedent if they suddenly start letting you have flexible working that nobody else can have. So they will never agree to it.

But if you start down the flexible working because of ...... road, you may not like the results. If you state you need it for health conditions - did you declare those conditions before you began work and suggest you had a disability? You may open up a whole area that you would not want to discuss, because not even that will give you the flexible working. If you have a disability and if the employer can manage a reasonable adjustment in your hours, you need to be clear - they will adjust your pay as well. If you aren't working the contractual hours then you are not going to get paid for them either. Which reduces your income further. And if they can't adjust your hours, then they can still refuse, and then it becomes a capability issue if you are saying that the hours that you agreed to work are damaging your health. There is only one place that discussion ends - dismissal.

And if you are saying that your need flexible working for caring, then it still doesn't have to be agreed, but it also raises some pretty good queries about why you only need that adjustment on the occasional Saturdays you work - and even if agreed it reduces your pay again.

And for either "good reason£ for flexible working, again, looking at it from their point of view you are suggesting spreading the same hours over what you consider to be days you want to work - I would be asking if you can't manage the hours now, then how do you manage the same hours without having a similar problem. They are all hours worked - and it sounds like an excuse to get out of the weekends everybody else has to work.

And I would observe that they may be a terrible company to work for, but you have a year and three months to go before you have any real employment protection. Can you afford to be giving them a reason to look for ways of getting rid of you, if you have been looking for something better for months and haven't found anything? That would suggest that there isn't a whole load of available better jobs, and bad though your employer may be, there will probably be a line of people waiting for a job there. £16k isn't a great wage, and the hours aren't fabulous either (although there are a lot worse). But it will be better than a lot of other people have. So I would suggest that you stick your head down and keep on job-hunting.

One final point - reviewing a rota does not mean anything. They can review it and change nothing. "Reviewing" something is a fob off phrase designed to shut people up. And a review can also make things worse and not better!

silverwhistle

ACG wrote: »

You can ask them to accomodate your hours due to medical or personal reasons but they are within their rights to reject them. You then risk being on their radar as someone they do not want... Im not saying that would happen, but it could ....

Hmm, but they're already short-staffed (for obvious reasons it would appear), so they may not be in any hurry to get rid, and have the expense and difficulty of recruitment. 16k p.a. is over minimum wage but not significantly.

I don't think that the lack of employment protection before 2 years is up is significant given your lack of desire to stay there.

sangie595

silverwhistle wrote: »

Hmm, but they're already short-staffed (for obvious reasons it would appear), so they may not be in any hurry to get rid, and have the expense and difficulty of recruitment. 16k p.a. is over minimum wage but not significantly.

I don't think that the lack of employment protection before 2 years is up is significant given your lack of desire to stay there.

The employer hasn't said they are short-staffed. The staff say they need more staff to work the hours they would like to work. That is not short-staffed.

The OP has been looking for a better job for the best part of nine months and hasn't found one. Which, unless we are to assume that the OP isn't a good candidate, means that the shortage is in available, better, jobs. That doesn't suggest the OP will be difficult to replace at all - there's a lot of people who think just over the NMW is a decent wage. If you aren't earning it, work part-time, or are unemployed, it is. Poor conditions of employment often result from a poor local economy with few jobs - if an employer thinks they need to hang on to their staff, then they offer better terms. This employer doesn't appear to be interested in offering better terms, so they obviously don't feel they need to.

And the lack of two years employment is a significant issue if you wish to leave on your own terms and not be dismissed. The OP has said that they cannot afford to be unemployed. So I suspect they desire to stay there until there is something better available. So the two years does, in fact, matter a lot.

ceetp

theoretica, you're right I don't mind working weekends at all.

Moneysaver199, I am 24, I don't know if that is considered old or young these days! All I know is I am exhausted! Not because of the hours (48 is alot, wow), but just because I don't have an opportunity to rest as my day off is just a day of working at home and running errands in the town. I am not ungrateful and don't begrudge looking after my aunt. I just wanted to ask if anybody knew if there was any way of me easing my work situation! Thank you for being so nice.

As someone above mentioned, I have no desire to go to the pub or out clubbing so that is in no way the reason why I would like some relief from working weekends. I don't drink and have no friends in my new town anyway. I'm purely here to help my Aunt.

sangie595, I think you've misread or misunderstood my issue. I don't have a disability. I never mentioned that I do. I am also not an official carer for my Aunt at present, though it may be on the cards in future. I help her out with bathing, housework, laundry, cooking meals and shopping, aswell as some other tasks. I don't know if you're familiar with Multiple Sclerosis but it can become difficult to do even the most simple of things.
I don't feel I should have to explain why working an extra hour on top of a day I'm already working has many benefits to working an entire extra day. It's not something that is difficult to understand.
Plus, the one day I have off is sometimes a Sunday. Which is inconvenient for obvious reasons.
I wouldn't even mind if my two days off were in the week as opposed to the weekend. So suggesting that I am making excuses to be spoiled and have the weekends off has really irked me.

Thank you everyone else that has replied without being patronising.

ceetp

sangie595 wrote: »

The employer hasn't said they are short-staffed. The staff say they need more staff to work the hours they would like to work. That is not short-staffed.

Sangie595, wrong again. The employer IS short staffed. At the moment my team do volunteered (guilt-tripped) overtime. Which I never go for as per the reasons above. If everyone were to do their regular hours, the business couldn't exist sufficiently.

sangie595

ceetp wrote: »

sangie595, I think you've misread or misunderstood my issue. I don't have a disability. I never mentioned that I do. I am also not an official carer for my Aunt at present, though it may be on the cards in future. I help her out with bathing, housework, laundry, cooking meals and shopping, aswell as some other tasks. I don't know if you're familiar with Multiple Sclerosis but it can become difficult to do even the most simple of things.
I don't feel I should have to explain why working an extra hour on top of a day I'm already working has many benefits to working an entire extra day. It's not something that is difficult to understand.
Plus, the one day I have off is sometimes a Sunday. Which is inconvenient for obvious reasons.
I wouldn't even mind if my two days off were in the week as opposed to the weekend. So suggesting that I am making excuses to be spoiled and have the weekends off has really irked me.

Thank you everyone else that has replied without being patronising.

I think you in fact misread me. I said that IF you had a disability; depression certainly can count as one, and you used the depression - and the question of getting a doctors note to support a claim for different working hours - as a possible route for you getting your desired working hours. If you knew that you had no disability, why would you think the employer would be even slightly interested in your GP's opinion?

And yes, I know exactly how MS works - my best friend has MS. But you still seem to think that the employer needs to care about what you do outside working hours. They don't.

At no point did I say you were spoiled, and you are reacting to advice you don't like as a personal insult. You are asking your employer to treat you differently from everyone else. You are asking for that either because of your medical conditions (you say no), your care responsibilities (you say you are not officially a carer and that is not the reason) or because it is what you want. It is one of the three. You say that everyone wants it - but there should be a reason why you get it because you can't work six days a week every third week like everyone else does. I am telling you that playing any of that as a card is laden with more problems than the one you have already got. In the end, you were right - you presumed terms that did not exist, but you agreed to them.. The employer didn't mislead or lie to you - you simply thought you knew what they meant, and you didn't.

So if you wish to pursue a course that involves arguing that you should be on different hours than you agreed to, you need to know the downside of using that argument. That won't change because you don't like it.