On-call or working?

zagfles

Serenity74 said:

zagfles said:

Have a look at the ACAS guide to working hours https://www.acas.org.uk/working-hours

For example you are entitled to an uninterrupted 11 hours between working days, so if you finish work at 5pm, get called at 2am and work for 4 hours till 6am, you are entitled to your 11 hours off ie till at least 5pm (as you only got 9 hours off between 5pm and 2am). Even if you've opted out of the 48h week max, this applies.

Basically, if you're busy out of office hours covering it all oncall isn't going to work, they'll have to put a shift system in place. If say evenings are busy but overnight is quieter they could do two shifts eg covering 6am-10pm on shifts with 2 shifts 6am-2pm and 2pm to 10pm, and 10pm-6am oncall.

There's a bit of a grey area as to whether oncall is working time - it depends on what's expected, where you have to be, and restrictions on you. But it might not be to your advantage to have oncall time (ie the time when you're oncall but not called and actually working) treated at working time. We went through it with HR at our place when they thought oncall should be treated as working time, we all objected because it would have meant night shifts, when it's usually very quiet overnight, and would also have meant two shifts at weekends which would have ruined double the weekends.

That's useful. So if they want us to start a 'normal' working day at 9am then we can't take any calls after 10pm. Which leaves a big hole in their 24 hour plan!

Not necessarily - for instance if you were called at 4am without getting a call earlier you'd have had your 11 hours off!

We were never pedantic about the 11 hours, but we did catch up with sleep for instance if I was called at 11pm and worked till 1am then I'd probably just turn up at work at 10am or so, even though I could roll up at noon, that seemed reasonable to me, I'd have a bit of a lie in to catch up on sleep I'd missed. But OTOH if I was called at 4am and worked till 8am, the company could technically expect me in on time as normal, but I've missed 4 hours of sleep so I'd have a lie in. Give and take. But we had the working time rules to fall back on if the company acted unreasonably. But we had good management and it was more a case of staff and management united against HR!

The volume of calls is a bit of an unknown as we'll be starting new customers who operate 24/7 but even with our existing customers, who at the moment don't have that cover, I can see a steady stream of calls being logged by our overflow service. Last weekend for example 12 calls including several after midnight. If those are the numbers when there is no out of hours service I can see calls being fairly frequent.

In terms of what you can and can't do while on-call their 'get out' seems to be they aren't restricting you as you can take your laptop and phone with you anywhere you go but in the real world that's not going to happen and as calls have to be responded to within 10 minutes its a pretty major restriction. 

Of course they're restricting you. Can you go swimming? Have a few beers?

zagfles

Serenity74 said:

Thrugelmir said:

If the business is offering it's clients a service. Then the business needs to find a way of delivering same. Unfortunately the business will ultimately win. Employees are expendable. If someone doesn't wish to fulfill a role. There'll be somebody else who does. Companies don't have the time to micro manage every employees individual preferences. 

I've never worked at a company that's offered 24/7 cover before but I have worked at one that covered 6am - 2am and they ran 3 shifts to ensure all the hours were properly covered. To my mind if you want to offer 24/7 cover you should have enough staff working shifts to cover all those hours.

This seems to be something they've sold without really having the resources to deliver and instead are just pushing the work onto the existing staff on top of their current full time roles. 

But the impression I'm getting is that while its likely it wouldn't stand up if challenged legally in practical terms there's not much that can be done. As you say the power is with the employer.

Employers still have to obey the law. Plus there's job shortages in a lot of the economy, some employers are desparate for workers, obviously depends on the sector. But do you really want to work for an employer who has no regard for the law, what if they're ignoring H&S law, min wage etc. There's plenty of decent or semi-decent employers out there who at least try to comply with the law

pete-20-11

I’m not sure the 11 hours rest applies to on-call. 

There’s a concept of compensatory rest - you miss two hours of your 11 hour rest, you can get those two hours rest at another point, e.g. later in the week. 

zagfles

pete-20-11 said:

I’m not sure the 11 hours rest applies to on-call. 

There’s a concept of compensatory rest - you miss two hours of your 11 hour rest, you can get those two hours rest at another point, e.g. later in the week. 

It might not apply to the time you're oncall but not working (depending on where you have to be etc). It definitely applies to the time you're called and working. Compensatory rest is only supposed to be for emergencies, not for something entirely expected and predictable like a customer with 24/7 cover expecting a server to be fixed at 2am. It might apply eg if there was massive power surge in an area which blew 100 customers' servers.

pete-20-11

Yeah I guess in my case, on-call is for “emergencies” whereas this just sounds like bad planning 🤣

Martin_the_Unjust

So your in the pub, you’ve had a few beers, the works phone rings and the company expect you to then work? …and possibly drive?

hmmmmmm.


Thankfully there appears to be a million plus job vacancies.

Serenity74

oh_really said:

Who's phone and laptop, yours or the employers?

The employer does realise that many locations have shockingly poor reception, how do they propose to work with that?

I'd be viewing this as an organising opportunity and get joining a trade union now.

How much is the stand-by allowance to be and what payments will staff called out receive?

My own phone. The company doesn't provide phones or even give a phone allowance anymore as 'all contracts come with minutes', I was under the impression I was paying for those minutes but my employer seems to be under the impression they are free. 

Company laptop but its over 5 years old and massive so the 'take it with you' idea isn't much help. Its not really a laptop you want to be carrying around everywhere even if it was practical to do the work on a laptop alone, which it isn't.

The allowance is another of those things they are reluctant to confirm which suggests to me it won't be great. The whisper is for a week of 24/7 support with a minimal number of calls, whatever that means, we're looking at something in the region of £100 which IMO is a long way from being acceptable for essentially giving up a week of your life every month.

Serenity74

zagfles said:

Not necessarily - for instance if you were called at 4am without getting a call earlier you'd have had your 11 hours off! 

We were never pedantic about the 11 hours, but we did catch up with sleep for instance if I was called at 11pm and worked till 1am then I'd probably just turn up at work at 10am or so, even though I could roll up at noon, that seemed reasonable to me, I'd have a bit of a lie in to catch up on sleep I'd missed. 

Of course they're restricting you. Can you go swimming? Have a few beers?

From looking at what's being logged out of hours even before his comes into effect I suspect there will be a steady stream of calls from 5pm to around 9pm, then potentially a couple between midnight and 1am when there's a shift change at one of our clients, then start up again from 6am when our customers who start earlier than we do start coming in.

There is not likely to be any give and take. We have to be ready to go bang on time or it gets flagged up and we're already short of staff thanks to redundancies for the level of work we have during a normal day.

Frankly its got all the ingredients to push me to a breakdown which is another concern I have with this plan. 

Serenity74

Martin_the_Unjust said:

So your in the pub, you’ve had a few beers, the works phone rings and the company expect you to then work? …and possibly drive?

hmmmmmm.


Thankfully there appears to be a million plus job vacancies.

In a word yes. In fact the suggestion is you take your phone and laptop to the pub That seems to be what they're relying on to be able to say you are on call and not working. Of course in the real world that's not the case, imagine going to a concert and taking your laptop and phone and trying to take calls and work, never going to happen. So in reality you are tied to home 24/7 for a week.

The driving thing is also a mess. Around 75% of staff and a similar amount of customers are based in the North East where head office is with the rest, both staff and customers, spread around the country. Its precarious at the best of times as if we've only got one person in an area and they're on leave when a call requiring a visit comes in then its a long trip for someone. But when it moves to 24/7 it's pretty much unworkable IMO. The plan is that the members of staff not on-call have to make themselves available in case they are needed for a visit. How that doesn't also qualify as on-call is a mystery to me at the moment. 

As far as I'm concerned they've sold a service they simply don't have the resources to provide and won't, or can't as they've been giving out cheap contracts to get business, put those resources in place. 

Serenity74

Thanks all. It seems they are taking liberties as I suspected. Doesn't sound like there's an easy solution. Would have to be a threat of taking further action which could get messy quickly. 

Guess its time to start looking for another job.