Advice on Employment Issue

Shlomzeh

Hello,

Myself and several other employees have been having issue with what we feel is unfair treatment by our employers. We are all Summer employees working as "leaders" with foreign students who come to Ireland to learn English. I also worked for the same company last year.

I am a fixed-term employee.

My offer of employment stated:

"This post will be full time,approximately 45 hours per week, at a shift rate basis."

My contract (signed two weeks later) stated:

"Your normal hours of work, start and finishing times are variable as per your roster and/or according to the needs of the business, Monday to Sunday with agreed breaks in line with the Organisation of Working time act each day. You may be required to work split shifts as per your roster. If/when required you may be required to work some additional hours where necessary. "

"Your wage is €9.75 per hour paid monthly "

"It is an express condition of employment that you are prepared, whenever necessary, to carry out other duties of which you are competent and capable to carry out within our business when required. This flexibility is essential as the type and volume of work is always subject to change, and it allows us to operate efficiently and gain maximum potential from our work force."

At the induction, we were informed that:

- The hours of work in the first week of employment would be less than agreed, but would increase during the month.

The facts of my employment, however, are:

- I worked 30 hours; 26 hours; 15 hours; 10 hours (declining as opposed to inclining as promised)
- I never worked anywhere near what the offer of employment stated

I am curious to know what exactly my position is in this matter. Do I have a point for breach of contract, considering they failed to provide me with the work offered?

I don't believe the contract (stating my hours are 'variable') contradicts my offer of employment, but merely supplements it, since if something is an 'approximate', it is inherently variable. Also, the contract did not contradict the offer of full-time work.

I was never given such work, and the representation made to me at the induction also turned out to be false (about hours increasing).

I would also like to know whether or not I am entitled to be paid for every hour worked (as per contract), or per shift as per offer of employment (a shift constituting 4 hours - although we regularly overran this and went an hour or so over, as demanded by our manager)?

As an extension to the above, I would like to know whether or not I am entitled to preparatory pay (we were all informed we must attend work 20 minutes early every day for meetings with the manager and with the clients and for preparing the days activities) and for post-activity work (cleaning up, etc) which occur outside the times of the 'shifts' as set by the company (the times are not specified in the contract, they were merely mentioned to us in the induction.)

Any help you can provide on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

chops018

Go see a Solicitor. The forum charter doesn't allow legal advice to be given on here.

hullaballoo

Unfortunately, the above user is correct. Since this is bordering on a breach of contract query, you will probably need a solicitor's assistance but it may be valuable to talk to NERA about your issue as well.