Working Hours ? - legal side

[cagiva gezzer]

Cliffs:

Worked in a company for four years.
More and more work as i move up and clients become more demanding.
Checking clauses in contract / what they can squeeze out of me?

Situation:

In a normal 5 day week I can easily do 75hours. The last week was 82hours, but this included cleaning the van and four hours of paperwork over the weekend. My contract says:

[Omega]

https://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/WorkingHoursAndTimeOff/DG_10029426

[Skudd]

Unfortunately, in this current climate, I would grin and bear it while the work is there ( as long as you are being paid for it) I'm self employed so do as much as I can when the going is good for the times when it is poor.
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[Phoenix]

The 48 hour week is an average over a specified reference period, one is 17 weeks the other is 26 I think. So it's perfectly acceptable for a company to get you to work 60hours for several weeks aslong as within 17 weeks of the reference start date the average is brought down to 48hours. It's down to you to opt out of this, you should have done it when you started the job if you work over 48hours on average.

Other entitlements are time off, you are entitled to 11 hours off work within a 24 hour period (defined by when your duty starts). So if you start work at 7am you are entitled to finish work at 8pm (giving you 11 hours off in 24).

You're also entitled to 30 minutes break if you work between 6-9hours in a shift and you must take at least 15minutes of this before you hit 6hours. Work over 9 hours and you're entitled to 45mins break.

I'm not sure if there is a limit on your weekly work, for myself the working time directive limits me to 60hours of actual work (longer in reality for various tacho reasons but HGV working time rules are stricter). It may be that as a general worker you're only limited by your time off, so 11 hours each day and you're entitled to 48hours off at the end of the week so that's a limit of 65hours for you. As said though you can choose to give up your 11 hours off and your 48hours so you can work longer, but you are entitled.

[chris-red]

Your average working week is twice what mine is, (37.5 hours) nothing else interesting to so just wanted to point it out
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[iooi]

Self Employed ?

Employed by the company ?

Paid by the hour or by salary ?

How do they class the time taken to travel to each job.
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[cagiva gezzer]

Employed by the company.
Salary.
They don't really class travel time. They don't really do anything with it. They don't really monitor hours. . .

Thing is, no one is there standing over you saying you MUST do this work, it's just anyone with a conscious keeps doing the work to keep up with the job.

Don't do the work = Pissed off phone calls from clients / extra work running around to tidy up the mess = STRESS
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[Pie-Roe]

Thats an easy week

I worked for 5 months 6 days a week, 8am to anytime between midnight and 3am.

But that comes with the job.

Pyro

EDITED for Phoenix, I'm now down to just 8am til 1030pm 6 days a week. Haven't worked less than 65 since I left school.
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[Phoenix]

It's all very well saying you worked longer hours/day for 5months, I get it a lot, I average 55-60hours a week and get people saying, "oh that's nothing, for a while I worked 70", it makes a difference when it's a permanent fixture, it also depends what job your doing.

It sounds like you haven't really brought the issue up at all, depending how long you've been doing it may make it difficult to all of sudden say you can't cope anymore and need more help, if it's always been a problem you need to tell managers from the start. You won't get anywhere without speaking to them though, maybe talk to anyone else doing your job too and see if they feel the same, ask for work to be divided amongst others or to employ another person doing your job to even it up.