I’m currently being asked to do a 10 hour day and ONCALL at night for recovery? This means that for the ONCALL element I have to be available to work if a job comes in. However I only receive flat rate if I do work and nothing for being available? Also how does this work with WTD? It seems that the Tacho exempt rule is always quoted, even if you’ve only had 4 hours rest.
So my question is should you be paid for ONCALL hours?
And are the rules being stretched to save on employee costs?
I worked on recovery for a while, we were all self employed and whilst we had to work all hours which wtd doesnt enter into the equation, we were well paid but only when we were actually sat in the truck and moving. We did an on call rota of nights but still worked through the day, the mindset was work till you drop. It wasn’t for me. I was getting out of bed at 11pm and getting home at 2 am, back into bed then woken up at 4am to go out again, only getting paid for two jobs and nothing for the actual standby. My opinion is if you are employed as a driver on PAYE then you should receive standby pay to cover the disruption to both your sleep and your family life.
My boy is a windscreen fitter. He has to be on call through the night just in case but is paid to be on standby.
In my world if you have to put your life on hold for a company then they should at least pay you to be on standby.
No you can’t expect to be paid for on call hours. What you can usually expect is to receive a payment for being on standby, this may be specific to the relevant nights or it may be built into some other aspect of your total annual pay.
UKtramp:
I worked on recovery for a while, we were all self employed and whilst we had to work all hours which wtd doesnt enter into the equation, we were well paid but only when we were actually sat in the truck and moving. We did an on call rota of nights but still worked through the day, the mindset was work till you drop. It wasn’t for me. I was getting out of bed at 11pm and getting home at 2 am, back into bed then woken up at 4am to go out again, only getting paid for two jobs and nothing for the actual standby. My opinion is if you are employed as a driver on PAYE then you should receive standby pay to cover the disruption to both your sleep and your family life.
Doesn’t matter if your PAYE or s/employed - not being paid standby/on call money at any time in the 24 hrs is taking the ■■■■. I’ve done this rubbish for years and saw the light - being tied to a phone and not being able to plan anything and having to drop everything and go really wrecks your home life. Great if your Billy No Mates and nothing else going on in your life but if you have a partner children etc it’s not fair on them.
Another stunt was starting you at, say, 02.15 and paying day rate, cheeky whatsits. Refused to do it as s/e at the time. Eventually they had to pay night rate until 6am.
So next I bring this little nugget from Europe. And yes it’s before we left so applicable maybe? Yes the example is based on a Firefighter. But the principle is the same.
It basically defines the limitations, so how free are you? Time span is 20mins to get to work, you have to accept the work, and must be available. So you cannot spend your time freely?
And to draw light on the pay situation It’s £9 an hour for class 2 and same at night?
Longest stint I’ve done is a 18hour day, with an hour break.
I’m just interested to hear peoples thoughts and if there are any other recovery drivers on here doing similar type of shifts?
I’ve been under the impression it’s pretty much standard across recovery for smaller firms, AA etc I’m sure doesn’t hold true.
There may aspects of employment law that don’t sit quite in line, there are probably loads of h&s law that would make recovery jobs almost impossible in some scenarios.
The firm I worked at didn’t pay anything for on call but it wasn’t compulsory to accept a job sent out of shift time. If you didn’t keep a truck at home you’d be lower down the list to get sent a job as your response time would be slower.
Worked on Free Recovery through Motorway Roadworks. We were on call 24/7, as we were living either on a slip road ,or close to the M/way. We were paid up to £1000 per week to compensate for the hours.That was 5-6 years ago.