On-call or working?

Thrugelmir

zagfles said:

Thrugelmir said:

Serenity74 said:

oh_really said:

I suspect your employer will simply impose their will on the workforce and if there is any pushback, pick the staff off one at a time.
Good luck resolving without collective representation.

Unfortunately we have a lot of inexperienced young staff who have just accepted this change leaving a couple of us older, more experienced ones to ask the questions. As you say you risk being branded the troublemaker and, at best, have life made difficult, at worst, pushed out.

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. 

No. But they need to obey the law.

Nothing to suggest the employer won't be.  There's often an element of jumping the gun with office gossip leading the way. With employees working from home. Doesn't help with communication and everybody being on the same page. Until matters become official just is speculation. That does nobody any good.  Times are challenging for many companies who've yet to recover from the effects of the pandemic. Unless the business generates revenue and ultimately bottom line profits. People won't have a job to do in any event. 

Savvy_Sue

oh_really said:

Serenity74 said:

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. 

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?

This.

Mobilise your colleagues. Start with the older, wiser heads who can see this for the nonsense it is. Point out to the youngsters that for a week at a time they'll be tied to their laptops and phones 24/7 and what that actually means.

Google 'join a union', contact whatever seems like a best fit, and ask what support you'd get if you wanted their support in this situation. 

But job hunt too ...

elsien

I’d be declining to use my own mobile phone for work related business. Not a number I’d be sharing with them under any circumstances. 

zagfles

Thrugelmir said:

zagfles said:

Thrugelmir said:

Serenity74 said:

oh_really said:

I suspect your employer will simply impose their will on the workforce and if there is any pushback, pick the staff off one at a time.
Good luck resolving without collective representation.

Unfortunately we have a lot of inexperienced young staff who have just accepted this change leaving a couple of us older, more experienced ones to ask the questions. As you say you risk being branded the troublemaker and, at best, have life made difficult, at worst, pushed out.

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. 

No. But they need to obey the law.

Nothing to suggest the employer won't be.  There's often an element of jumping the gun with office gossip leading the way. With employees working from home. Doesn't help with communication and everybody being on the same page. Until matters become official just is speculation. That does nobody any good.  Times are challenging for many companies who've yet to recover from the effects of the pandemic. Unless the business generates revenue and ultimately bottom line profits. People won't have a job to do in any event. 

Of course it's speculation. If the employer obeys the law wrt rest breaks, and stuff like not discriminating against workers who opt into the 48h week, then I doubt the OP will have a problem.

zagfles

Savvy_Sue said:

oh_really said:

Serenity74 said:

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. 

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?

This.

Mobilise your colleagues. Start with the older, wiser heads who can see this for the nonsense it is. Point out to the youngsters that for a week at a time they'll be tied to their laptops and phones 24/7 and what that actually means.

Google 'join a union', contact whatever seems like a best fit, and ask what support you'd get if you wanted their support in this situation. 

But job hunt too ...

We went through something similar many years ago at a previous employer. We did have a union but most of us weren't in it but we did everything ourselves anyway. Firstly, we made sure we understood the law, working time directive etc. Then we all wrote an identically worded letter to the company stating that their proposal was unacceptable and potentially illegal. We told that we would not be doing the rota they proposed, there was nothing in our contracts stating we had to do oncall so we wouldn't be, and we would be raising employment tribunal claims if the company violated the WTD.

They got back to us and we agreed a mutually acceptable shift/oncall rota, with reasonable compensation.

Ironically our "leader" for this issue was a guy who couldn't stick unions! He made a very good union leader!

zagfles

Serenity74 said:

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.

That's just laughable, particularly if it includes the time when you're called out and actually working, for which they have to pay you minimum wage (although they probably could aggregate it with your normal working hours for min wage purposes).

It sounds like a completely incompetant employer who doesn't understand the law and idiot sales staff who've sold cheap 24/7 cover without calculating the cost of providing that cover, which can be big depending how they define the cover, for instance did they specify emergencies only out of office hours or the same level of support as in the day? 

YBR

If you're driving to sites, or potentially doing so, or anything else safety critical, it's also worth looking at the HSE website on the topic of fatigue. 
In my industry it's been over 30 years since they started limiting shifts to 12 hours (now 12 hours door-to-door), and 72 hours ain 7 days, 13 shifts in 14 days and 23 shifts in 28 days. The HSE Fatigue Risk index is more complex than that and there's a calculator sheet we use. This takes account of the type of work and the fact that irregular hours are much worse. (We only sign out of the working hours directive because it's one more thing to monitor).

It might be useful to note that in the Railway industry, driving (cars/vans) is now a bigger risk to staff than working on the track, in that over the last 5 years more railway staff have been killed or injured on the roads than on the tracks. One of the factors in the Clapham Crash investigation was that staff had been working their normal days in the office all week, then all weekend (often nights) on site with no rest days, for weeks. What could possibly go wrong?

oh_really

Serenity74 said:

My own phone. 

You don't have a mobile available at their beck and call. Their work activity, they supply the tools to enable their staff to do their work. Everyone else needs to be of similar thoughts, if not encourage them into line.

Do the terms of your employment require you to not only have a phone but to make it available for your employers business. Do the expect you to provide a landline as well?

elsien

oh_really said:

Serenity74 said:

My own phone. 

You don't have a mobile available at their beck and call. Their work activity, they supply the tools to enable their staff to do their work. Everyone else needs to be of similar thoughts, if not encourage them into line.

Do the terms of your employment require you to not only have a phone but to make it available for your employers business. Do the expect you to provide a landline as well?

Yes, the words cake and eat are rather coming to mind. 

oh_really

Op, encourage all to get with the programme or else run a real risk of getting stitched up like a kipper...https://www.tuc.org.uk/joinunion
Once you have given something up, its very difficult to get it back.