Is this legal?

TBagpuss

Citizens Advice say:

"On-call" workers
If your job requires you to be "on call" these hours count as time at work. Being on call generally means that you have to be at a place decided by your employer. This might mean you have to be at your workplace, stay within a certain distance of your workplace or stay at home.

If your employer says that you have to stay in a certain place when you are on call, then all the hours you are on call will count as time at work. This is still the case even if you're allowed to sleep when you're on call. If you don't have to stay within a certain place then your time on call doesn't count as working time until you actually start work

So the extra hours on Mon-Fri, at the office, count as work and they must be paid at least NMW.
If they are required to be at home on weekends then the whole of the time would count as work and they have to be paid MNW
If they are simply required to be available by phone at weekends then the time spent actually working (i.e. taking calls and dealing with any admin) would count as work and they have to be paid at least NMW.

There may also be breaches of the rules regarding working times is the hours worked mean that they are averaging over 48 hours a week

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

TBagpuss wrote: »

So the extra hours on Mon-Fri, at the office, count as work and they must be paid at least NMW.

They said:
"the 5 staff do their normal working hours then 2 of them (it's Rota'd) will answer the calls from their mobiles before and after work (8am-9.30am and 6pm-10pm) from home"

Ronaldo_Mconaldo

Did these employees gain this job thanks to some kind of human trafficker?

Fumblebee

Lol Ronaldo. And they get about 30 calls on a Saturday and about 25-30 on Sunday. I've spoken to them this morning and they will contact ACAS/HMRC as suggested.

Thanks all. The bosses are very, shall we say..harsh? So I will edit some details so I can't be identified if they come across this.

Guest101

harsh?


If you mean violent then this should be reported to the police

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

Fumblebee wrote: »

Lol Ronaldo. And they get about 30 calls on a Saturday and about 25-30 on Sunday. I've spoken to them this morning and they will contact ACAS/HMRC as suggested.

Thanks all. The bosses are very, shall we say..harsh? So I will edit some details so I can't be identified if they come across this.

Yeah that's ridiculous. That's a call every 15 minutes for an eight hour day. That's a day at work, not on call.