Help - primary employer wants me to quit second job

jobbingmusician

What does your contract actually say? Does it specify the number of hours' work each week, or is it a zero hours contract? If the latter, you could always refuse work on Sundays. (Conversely, though, they could just not offer you any work, in response. But it does sound as if they need you, from your latest post.)

Oldfield_Parker

It's quite vague, just says normal working hours are 37.5 and there are various shift patterns. It does also say that to meet the needs and patterns of the business shift working arrangements are flexible and subject to change so I guess they will point that out if necessary. To be honest, I won't fight it, Better to just make feelings known and move on.

jobbingmusician

It's just occurred to me - if your contract does not state that you are required to work on Sundays, you can refuse to work on Sundays - and my understanding is that any dismissal because of this is automatically unfair. (However, I do stress that until you have been there for 2 years your employer can dismiss you for any other reason!) Have a look at https://www.gov.uk/sunday-working

System

What days do you actually work? Do you think your main job will require you to work a Sunday now? Good point above - you can opt out of working Sundays, however if you want to keep the main job I wouldn’t rock the boat too much. I wouldn’t do anything until it actually clashes though, then you negotiate for a while and then if needs be kick up a fuss and then maybe consider quitting 2nd job. I would be asking how many Sundays they want to make you work though. I would be very annoyed if you quit and then they rarely scheduled you for a Sunday. Could you perhaps use some of your holiday on both jobs to counteract the occasional clash?

getmore4less

Oldfield_Parker wrote: »

Hi all,

Thanks for all your replies!

I think this is pretty much what I was expecting. The business has grown and we are struggling to answer all incoming calls (I work in a call centre) it's not really going to make a difference to them hours wise if I quit my second job as it's a Sunday job which is not particularly busy calls wise anyway and I can't work more hours for them anyway because I already work full time for them and obviously won't be offering to help out with overtime! They really just need to take on more staff as it's not physically possible for us to handle any more calls ourselves I don't think.

There's nowhere in my contract or handbook which states what days I have to work, not even one of those '5 from 7' contracts. There's also no policy in either handbook or contract about second jobs so not sure where that leaves me either. I guess I need to wait and see what they come back with having forwarded the original email confirming second job.

I think Pastures New is certainly right that employers basically want to own you! I've been looking for a new job for a little while now as they are a pretty bad company to work for on the whole so hoping to get something soon!

It does not really matter what the contracts says they can be changed to meet the business needs as it grows, it can delay any change but ultimately the business needs will need change.

if I read this right your second job is a Sunday and only Sunday
any flexibility available for that job where you could swap/miss the odd Sunday?

Main job is full time and does not currently include Sundays.

If it was changed to be more flexible on days/shift worked how often is Sunday working likely to happen(putting aside you get picked on to stop you working elsewhere).

eg. if there was a fair rota given current staffing how often would a Sunday come round.

Would they want people to work extra days or swap days to give the cover?

Could that fit with the second jobs flexibility?


Another angle is the full time equivalent analysis, this is where you use a persons availability in days|shifts|hours and map onto the business requirements to see how many people you need to cover those hours.
From that you can assess the number of people needed when the work level goes up.

if you can show that being more flexible does not solve the problem of not having enough people that can help back up a case.

eg.

if the place is open for calls say from 6to6 and a 7hr day with 2 people overlapping for breaks covers one workload.

35hr 7hr*5day being a full time week

To do that 7 days a week you have a requirement for 7*52=364 work days

Each pair with statutory holidays can do 46.4*5=232

364/232 is 1.57 so to cover the 7days and holidays you need more than 3.14 people

If you have 3 people apart from being short there will be periods where people need to work more than 5 days in a row.

getmore4less

Don't get your hopes up with opt out that does not apply to call centres.

Any resistance to Sunday working will just delay the inevitable that it will be put into the contracts at some point.

no more pay rises until new contract signed is the easy one to people transferred to flexible hours/days.