Contracted for 35 Hours, But Told to Log Off Unpaid – Where Do We Stand?

DullGreyGuy

Exodi said:

On a quieter day where 'no work is available' does that literally mean doing nothing? I'm sure there are some small tasks that can fill a small amount of time, but in the main is that what we are talking about?

The reason I mention this is because, while some may insist you should be paid for doing nothing if your contract doesn't prevent it (assuming there are no stand-down clauses), I don't think realistically (or commercially) that situation will be allowed to continue for very long (your post is actually the start of a response to the issue). I think too many people insisting they want paying for nothing will just cause them to start dropping agency workers, especially as the banks have been quite vocal of late about remote working.

In my contact centre days, and in particular the first place I worked that seemed fairly bad at predicting call volumes then no, you simply had to sit there in silence and/or read the training manuals. We had green screen terminals then so no access to the internet, no games, no bringing in reading materials. 

If you were lucky and were on an elevated line (eg complaints or new customers) then there may be some call back slips somewhere but they'd typically only last an hour before they were all done and normally you had to share them out so was well under an hour. Even if you did get any then most customers had already called back themselves so nothing to really do on the call anyway.

We had mainly employees on hourly contracts, they would certainly release people after a while of the forecasts being shown to be wrong and you had the choice of unpaid or use holiday pay. After a bit of a meltdown over the matter they agreed to pay you a minimum of 2hrs for a shift if you'd gotten to the office and logged in by the time you were stood down; before that you could travel in log in and 10 minutes later be told to go home and get 50p for your troubles. 

DE_612183

Banks employ agency workers for a specific reason - the flexibility to manage the workforce around demand - no demand, then the workers get let go ( or hours / number of staff reduced ) so that service is maintained but costs are kept to a minimum.

If you are getting work via an agency this is what you need to accept - many people see this type of work as a route into employment with the end client - which is great as then you get the full rights ( after 2 years ).

superbigal

This is rather interesting as calling any support centre involving a bank normally takes about 30 minutes to even get through. 

DullGreyGuy

superbigal said:

This is rather interesting as calling any support centre involving a bank normally takes about 30 minutes to even get through. 

That depends on your bank, status with the bank and which area of the bank you are calling. Certainly not all are 30 minute waits.

It will also depend on the internal SLAs; in my aforementioned company the target was to answer 95% of calls within 10 seconds hence we had large numbers of staff -v- the expected call volumes. In another employer it was to have an average waiting time of less than 5 minutes which meant we could have less staff for the same call expectations as the lunchtime peak of 15 minute waits was offset by the mid morning waits of under 1 minute. 

There is an element of you get what you pay for and when most people prioritise price over value companies will cut costs to get a cheaper product to the market and customer service staff are always an easy one to cull 

1stTimer

The letter you have posted shows a start date of March with a 2-3 month contract then - could be extended. Maybe this was a trial for them to see if you were needed for the full 35 hrs and now the trial is up they have re-evaluated?