Owed hours

Njd

My employer has just told me I owe them 140hrs work. I want to know where I stand because i have worked every shift my employer has given me surely they can not expect me to make up all those hours through no fault of my own, most of what I have read seems to indicate that it is the employers responsibility to allocate your contracted hours and if they fail to do so it’s their fault not mine?

Neil_Jones

Working every shift you were given does not necessarily mean you do not owe hours. You will have had a contract to do a certain number of hours a week/month.

Normally this situation of owing hours tends to occur if you work at a different location with different operating hours. So if you work at one building that runs, say 9-5 (7.5hrs work, 30min lunch) when you're contracted to do 8-6 (9hrs work, 1hr lunch) then you would owe 90 minutes.

If you seriously owe 140hrs something's gone wrong somewhere and it can be reclaimed by, for example, an extra hour here, 30 minutes there, and so on. But you need to go back to your manager and ask them to break down how you've ended up in this situation. Check your payslips and your working patterns and ensure you have been paid for every hour you have worked. That may explain it.

getmore4less

Have you checked their calculations?

Should be pretty obvious if you are not getting contracted hours.

Any periods where you have done more hours/overtime.

General_Grant

What do your written particulars of employment actually say about your working hours?

Are they specified by time periods (like 9 am to 5 pm (with half-hour unpaid break) Monday to Friday) or in some other way?

Blatchford

There isn't much information being given here, hence the responses being more questions than answers. But another question might be "Is this an annualised contract" where people are paid in equal instalments over the year for working a set number of annual hours? Because you can't owe them 140 hours unless you have been paid for those 140 hours.

But broadly speaking, it is entirely possible that the employer can expect you to make up the missing hours if you have been paid for them. It could just as easily be argued that you should have been speaking to your employer about the fact that you weren't working enough hours - 140 hours is not a small amount that is easily overlooked.