change/increase in hours- new contract needed?
Discussion
I work for a fairly small company, about 10 of us of in my department, we all work normalish office hours.
Things are changing in my industry and we are having to adopt out of hours working, till 9pm in the evening and all day sat and sun, to be on call, to be available to take phone calls.
We had a small increase a few years ago, when we agreed to work an extra 2 hours every 2 weeks in order to be on call, either in the office or at at home. We would then be owed 2 hours. a rota is done every month and we all agree to this and change anything amongst ourselves. this has worked fine.
The new change is a bit more serious and its going to be pretty impossible to get the hours back that we will be working extra. It will work out as working an extra 4 hours on call in the evening every couple of weeks and being on call for a whole weekend once every 6-8 weeks. We do noy have such a thing as paid overtime and unpaid overtime is encouraged. we have targets and bonuses paid according to targets being met and exceeded, so one argument is that extra hours = extra bonus..
Our boss is basically asking the staff for suggestions on how it will work, we have basically no choice whether to adopt the new hours, it's just how it is worked. it may also be that we will be on call and not have anything to do, but I dont really think that is the point.
I am after some advice on the options and whether our contracts should be changed at all to reflect our new hours to be on call. Does anyone else work anything similar? how should we deal with our boss?
I would like some extra money for being on call but I dont think that is going to be an option, my boss's attitude just seems to be tough, put up with it or leave. I would consider working a saturday in the office (Whilst being on call) in return for a day off in the week, when I did my on call weekend. Until we start doing it, we dont know if we will be busy or have no calls at all, but I feel that it still limits what you can do at a weekend whilst being on call etc... Most of us have families so its a pretty important thing
Thanks for any help
Things are changing in my industry and we are having to adopt out of hours working, till 9pm in the evening and all day sat and sun, to be on call, to be available to take phone calls.
We had a small increase a few years ago, when we agreed to work an extra 2 hours every 2 weeks in order to be on call, either in the office or at at home. We would then be owed 2 hours. a rota is done every month and we all agree to this and change anything amongst ourselves. this has worked fine.
The new change is a bit more serious and its going to be pretty impossible to get the hours back that we will be working extra. It will work out as working an extra 4 hours on call in the evening every couple of weeks and being on call for a whole weekend once every 6-8 weeks. We do noy have such a thing as paid overtime and unpaid overtime is encouraged. we have targets and bonuses paid according to targets being met and exceeded, so one argument is that extra hours = extra bonus..
Our boss is basically asking the staff for suggestions on how it will work, we have basically no choice whether to adopt the new hours, it's just how it is worked. it may also be that we will be on call and not have anything to do, but I dont really think that is the point.
I am after some advice on the options and whether our contracts should be changed at all to reflect our new hours to be on call. Does anyone else work anything similar? how should we deal with our boss?
I would like some extra money for being on call but I dont think that is going to be an option, my boss's attitude just seems to be tough, put up with it or leave. I would consider working a saturday in the office (Whilst being on call) in return for a day off in the week, when I did my on call weekend. Until we start doing it, we dont know if we will be busy or have no calls at all, but I feel that it still limits what you can do at a weekend whilst being on call etc... Most of us have families so its a pretty important thing
Thanks for any help
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