Unpaid overtime

Joseph K. "the thinking man's idiot"
Posts: 8013 Joined: 14-03-06 Location: Brighton
Submitted by Joseph K. on 18 June, 2008 - 18:53.

at work at the moment the team of 3 of us are having to work through lunch and work late just to kinda keep up with the workload being put on us. we don't get paid as overtime has to be signed off in advance. it's putting a lot of strain on us, one of the others has been going straight from work to her 2nd job. now obviously we have the 'right' to take lunch and leave on time, but that's nothing without the ability/power to excercise it.

so far we've managed to 'collectivise' the problem a bit, trying to leave together, all take lunch or none take lunch etc as previously the most experienced person tended to take responsibility on herself and work silly hours. we've discussed it and all agreed it can't go on, and are going to talk to the boss about it together and say we're overworked/understaffed and they should take on another person. they probably won't, and we've talked about all starting to take our lunches and leaving bang on time and just letting the work pile up. whether this will happen i don't know.

now it's a bit depressing it takes collective action even to work your contracted hours, but there you go. so does anyone have experience of similar situations? any tips on making demands of your boss?

fwiw the manager of another department joked we should just go on strike today as 'it worked for those tanker drivers' tongue

tsi
Posts: 71 Joined: 04-04-08
18 June, 2008 - 19:20

I have had some similar experience in a few different workplaces.

I think you are doing the right things by all leaving together, all taking lunch and letting the work pile up. In this case I don't even think that a deliberate "go slow" is necessary from the sounds of it, if just taking all the breaks that you are entitled to is enough to let the work pile up. If they give you shit for it, you could simply tell them that you are entitled to your breaks, and that resting will help you be able to work at full capacity when you are on the clock.

If you can collectively refuse to do unpaid overtime for long enough, the employer will be forced to either sign off on paid overtime in advance, or hire an extra hand. Forcing paid overtime in my experience can do alright at forcing employers to address understaffing issues.

Just make sure that you all take your breaks and leave on time consistently. If one person is doing it but not others, management/supervisors will likely see it as a personal rather than systematic problem, and try to put pressure on the one who leaves or takes breaks.

EdmontonWobbly "Sombre, jaded class warrior."
Posts: 1313 Joined: 25-03-06 Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
18 June, 2008 - 19:28

If at all avoid meeting with management alone. When we worked in the call centre they wuold often try and grab one person who would be a bit easier to bully by themselves and drag them into the office and convince them to break ranks. Also they might take someone they perceive to be a ringleader and try and buy them off.

Joseph K. "the thinking man's idiot"
Posts: 8013 Joined: 14-03-06 Location: Brighton
18 June, 2008 - 19:49
tsi wrote:
Just make sure that you all take your breaks and leave on time consistently. If one person is doing it but not others, management/supervisors will likely see it as a personal rather than systematic problem, and try to put pressure on the one who leaves or takes breaks.

yeah this has been the problem for the last few weeks, initially i started staying as long as the others to help, then we got talking about it and have been acting more together. it's hard especially if you don't leave the office for lunch as people still come up to you and ask you to do stuff, but we've talked about it and now we seem pretty solid on all having lunch (unfortunately they're staggered as we have to cover each other).

EdmontonWobbly wrote:
If at all avoid meeting with management alone.

we're planning to raise it in our 'team meeting' (which is the 3 of us and the boss, who's also a co-owner of the company and spent today playing golf with a supplier while we struggled with a record day's workload). you're definitely right about raising it together, of the 3 of us i'm still on probation, one girl's quite timid and the other's contemplating just quitting, so we're very much weak individually if they try and divide and rule.

catch "unpractical[sic] and blinkered"
Posts: 9938 Joined: 07-02-06 Location: London
18 June, 2008 - 21:17

I've been in places where this was a major issue - in one we got somewhere, in another it just got worse and I left.

The more successful one, (some aspects of which happen to be detailed in the library), we managed to get everyone in the department, including a couple of supervisors and the senior supervisor, to take a full hour lunch, outside the college, every day. I also got into the habit of handing people their coats at two minutes to five, everything short of physically dragging them out of the place. We had a 'sympathetic' manager - who'd simultaneously tell us to take our proper breaks then pass down ridiculous amounts of work to us. Overall there's legal minimums on lunches afaik, not to mention all the productivity shit about not taking breaks while working - but it's a tough one anyway.

it's much, much harder when you have an objective amount of work - like paper that's never going to go away. Where we were taking breaks properly it was all talking to people/service (and paperwork, but not the majority of the workload) - so if you're not there, you can't talk to people. Full stop. The paperwork job I started off taking proper breaks on my own, every day, and ended up falling in with the other people in my office by the end (then quit).

tsi
Posts: 71 Joined: 04-04-08
18 June, 2008 - 21:44
catch wrote:
it's much, much harder when you have an objective amount of work - like paper that's never going to go away. Where we were taking breaks properly it was all talking to people/service (and paperwork, but not the majority of the workload) - so if you're not there, you can't talk to people. Full stop. The paperwork job I started off taking proper breaks on my own, every day, and ended up falling in with the other people in my office by the end (then quit).

yeah, also, quotas in manufacturing and transportation can make it difficult as well. forcing overtime did have some impact in a transportation job even with production quotas I worked though.

Yarrow
Posts: 79 Joined: 12-12-07
20 June, 2008 - 16:09

perhaps, as well as take your breaks, you could all be sure to observe every piece of health & safety that applies to you?

mostly it depends on the security of your job, or your strength of faith.

Udo_Bukowski
Posts: 286 Joined: 07-03-08
22 June, 2008 - 12:56
Yarrow wrote:
perhaps, as well as take your breaks, you could all be sure to observe every piece of health & safety that applies to you?

mostly it depends on the security of your job, or your strength of faith.

Aw. Bless. Yarrow wants to make friends and Udo is still going to play the schadenfreude card. LOOK AT THE LAW.Rich landed gentry individualist scumbags are our allies. Temporarily. Then we take on the tautological idea that we're criminals by necessity.

Joseph K. "the thinking man's idiot"
Posts: 8013 Joined: 14-03-06 Location: Brighton
7 July, 2008 - 15:24

er, ok.

update on this, we all raised it together with the boss, and typically the next week was really quiet. so it kinda reached a stalemate, but they did change the process we have to follow to make our jobs easier and so make it easier to cope with the volumes, we're all taking our breaks and leaving on time now so that's a victory, albeit undramatic.

however, one of the others handed in her notice today as she's had enough, so that's going to leave 2 of us. if they don't look for a replacement i think we've got a pretty good shout for demanding 1/2 her former salary each extra, since we'd be expected to do the work of an extra half person. also, i found out today she's still on her admin wage (she transferred internally to my department), kinda moot as she's leaving but given as i started in the same job at the same time on about £4k/year more isn't that unequal pay for equal work? Do you have to have been working somewhere a certain length of time to get equal pay protection?

Interestingly, when she handed in her notice the boss cited the credit crunch and hard times as to why they weren't offering her more to keep her, but i had to prepare some management accounts the other day and the directors paid themselves annual dividends 50% greater than the total annual wage bill (including theirs) only a couple of months ago. that went down well when i told the others, there's certainly an awareness of the 'class lines' and which side we're on.

Edit: actually, our contracts prohibit us discussing our pay with each other, so demanding equal pay could in theory get us disciplined for breach of contract. bastards. will chat to people in other departments and sound out their gripes.

catch "unpractical[sic] and blinkered"
Posts: 9938 Joined: 07-02-06 Location: London
7 July, 2008 - 15:44
Quote:
Edit: actually, our contracts prohibit us discussing our pay with each other

Might be worth checking if there's a statutory right which overrules clauses like this. For example the 'any other task deemed appropriate required by the organisation' which is in a lot of contracts is unenforcable afaik. Employers put a lot of bollocks into contracts that would never, ever stand up if they tried to enforce it since in many cases it directly contradicts employment law.