Forced to do extra work for no pay?

Litten888

Hi all, 

Asking for a friend. she has worked for a cleaning company for 4 years cleaning two large warehouses and offices a night. She is on a PAYE contract and paid minimum wage 

She has just recieved a call from the office saying they will no longer be paying a contractor to collect and clean the 700-800 microfibre clothes she uses a month and they have told her she has to take them home and wash and dry them herself as "everyone else" cleans their own apparently ( domestic cleaners who are self employed, not commercial sites ) 

Surley they can not make her do this? Any advice is welcomed 

Thankyou 

elsien

Look for another job. 

Certainly not something I would be agreeing to as an employee. 

Undervalued

Litten888 said:

Hi all, 

Asking for a friend. she has worked for a cleaning company for 4 years cleaning two large warehouses and offices a night. She is on a PAYE contract and paid minimum wage 

She has just recieved a call from the office saying they will no longer be paying a contractor to collect and clean the 700-800 microfibre clothes she uses a month and they have told her she has to take them home and wash and dry them herself as "everyone else" cleans their own apparently ( domestic cleaners who are self employed, not commercial sites ) 

Surley they can not make her do this? Any advice is welcomed 

Thankyou 

Legally, almost certainly not. So, in theory if she were to refuse and as a result they were to dismiss her she would have a strong claim for unfair dismissal.

That said, is this a route she is prepared to go down? Is the employer generally a sound and responsible  company? Or is it a dodgy "fly by night" sort of operation where getting any redress (regardless of the legal position) is going to be a real battle?

Start with a polite expression of her unwillingness to do this (either at all or without appropriate extra pay) and see what happens.

As @elsien has suggested, also look for a better job elsewhere!

itsthelittlethings

This will be illegal as it will take her below the minimum wage.

sheramber

Does she have a contract?

ohreallƳ

She only has domestic laundering facilities and they're not suitable for commercial use.  Moving beyond this attempting to force the issue potentially opens a different can of worms; insurance, this use may be problematic with her domestic insurer as her home is now become a place of work; now its under the scope of in-service inspection and testing, the inspector should record that the laundering assets are unsuitable for commercial work and fail them (fit for purpose).

As her home is now a workplace there should be a risk assessment conducted, its required to be suitable and sufficient. Perhaps @dickydonkin may lookin and offer a though on the matter.

Run it by me again, everyone else is doing this, why?  Are the daft?

sheramber

ohreallƳ said:

She only has domestic laundering facilities and they're not suitable for commercial use.  Moving beyond this attempting to force the issue potentially opens a different can of worms; insurance, this use may be problematic with her domestic insurer as her home is now become a place of work; now its under the scope of in-service inspection and testing, the inspector should record that the laundering assets are unsuitable for commercial work and fail them (fit for purpose).

As her home is now a workplace there should be a risk assessment conducted, its required to be suitable and sufficient. Perhaps @dickydonkin may lookin and offer a though on the matter.

Run it by me again, everyone else is doing this, why?  Are the daft?

The others are self employed so it will probably be part of their contract. 

SiliconChip

At the moment are the cloths just thrown away after a single use? If so then that seems like an awful waste, both of goods and money, so you can see why the employer would want to have them washed and reused. The issue is that they way they want to do it is unreasonable, and as pointed out illegal from a NMW persepective.

So the employer either needs to pay the cleaner for the time they spend doing the wash (and the cost of electricity, detergent, wear and tear on the machine, drying, etc.) or arrange for somebody else to collect the cloths (perhaps along with those used by other employed cleaners if there are any), clean them and return them for resuse. As neither thing is likely to happen then a new job might well be the best solution.

elsien

If you read the  OP, the employer has been paying a contractor to clean the cloths but is no longer willing to do so. Pushing that cost back onto the employee is not okay.

Grumpy_chap

ohreallƳ said:

Run it by me again, everyone else is doing this, why?  Are the daft?

I read the comment "everyone is doing it" as referring to self employed sole-trader cleaners working in people's houses.  Those cleaners have to provide and launder whatever cloths there are.

The OP is not a sole-trader, AIUI, but working as a PAYE employee.  The appropriate laundry falls to the employer to manage.  

SiliconChip

elsien said:

If you read the  OP, the employer has been paying a contractor to clean the cloths but is no longer willing to do so. Pushing that cost back onto the employee is not okay.

You're right, I missed that, and I agree that it's not OK to make the employee pay (which is what I'd already said).