I started driving class 2 motors with the firm a few months ago, agency at first, being paid overtime after 8 hours, then on a casual basis, overtime paid at basic rate, but as the base rate was higher than the agency base rate I agreed to ■■■■ it and see, even though it went against the grain for overtime being paid at time and a half after 8 hours, and as of the beginning of the year full time, salaried with no overtime payments. I thought I would give it a try for a few month’s, monitor the hours worked and come to a conclusion as to stay or not.
The people are fine and dandy, a decent manager, good crew to work with, no nights out, the job is local and I enjoy the work and go out of my way to be compliant with their requests, the kit is not the newest and you do get mucky from time to time though.
So here’s the rub, a meeting was had during which the drivers are offered overtime, at base rate, as the manager wants to pay us overtime as he recognizes that the historically quiet time of year is busier than normal, this would mean a change of contract, and I haven’t signed my original one yet, I piped up that if overtime is being offered I would need time and a half, ‘that is not an option’, I was told, although they do pay time and a half for Saturday working.
As a casual I worked 46 hours on average, contracted hours for them is 42.
As a salaried worker with little data to go on, my average hours are 48, with no o/t pay.
Overall average as casual and salaried is 46 hours during the busy ‘quiet’ period, there’s no telling what this will increase to during the busy summer months, but using these figures I calculate that over a year I would be giving the company approx 160 hours of free labour, if this was paid at time it comes to £1505 and at time and a half it comes to £2.258. I’m tempted to give them a month’s notice as I feel they are exploiting their drivers. as most firms seem to do now, I’m just not happy with the thought of working o/t for anything less than time and a half.
I don’t consider myself to be militant, but the whole overtime malarky really gets my goat.
Any thoughts or other views on this or your own situations?