Working 12 days in a row

Snake Plisken

Just wondering is it legal to work 12 days in a row without a day off? So our normal week is Monday to Friday 9 to 5.30, but once a month we have to provide oncall cover for Saturday and Sunday for which we get paid overtime, but both days at the weekend we are out at 9am and 90% of the time we work the full day on both days, by the 10th day of working most of us feel wrecked, management have been asked about this and they say because it's oncall they are covered to have us work the 12 days in a row, union reps aren't much use on this, so just wondering are the company management right that we are not entitled to a rest day?

newbie2

OWTA

(2) Subject to subsection (3), an employee shall, in each period of 7 days, be granted a rest period of at least 24 consecutive hours; subject to subsections (4) and (6), the time at which that rest period commences shall be such that that period is immediately preceded by a daily rest period.

IMO the overtime should not be compulsory. IF it is, there maybe a collective agreement which superceeds the act, or it might be in your contract, so that's okay. If there is no collective agreement, then that's another matter. You should have the right to refuse to come in on your rest day. If you guys have been doing this for years, then management can regard that as 'customs and practice', and they may argue that by refusing to come in as per usual you are taking unofficial industrial action, which can result in disciplinary procedures.

you need to speak to your union, find out if there is a collective agreement, and go from there. If you feeling very tired by the tenth day, then you could claim that on health and safety grounds you feel that you cannot come in. This is not advice that you should take however without speaking to your shop steward.

stevenmu

I don't know if there's a legal definition of "on call" or not, but if you pretty much always end up working the full 2 days then I would not consider it to be "on call", which should really only be for occasional emergencies. It sounds like there is a regular weekend workload which should really be scheduled accordingly.

somefeen

Its fairly standard in alot of industries so they might be able to justify it based on that?

newbie2

somefeen wrote: »

Its fairly standard in alot of industries so they might be able to justify it based on that?

Eh no.
they cant justify not giving a rest period because of industry standard. it's a health and safety issue. Only exemptions can justify it - and even then, must give 'comparable' rest periods.

Stheno

newbie2 wrote: »

Eh no.
they cant justify not giving a rest period because of industry standard. it's a health and safety issue. Only exemptions can justify it - and even then, must give 'comparable' rest periods.

From citizens info



Rest periods

The definition of a rest period is any time that is not working time. The rest periods set out in the Act are as follows:

(a) You are entitled to 11 consecutive hours rest in any period of 24 hours. In addition you should get 24 consecutive hours rest in any period of 7 days and this should normally follow on from one of the 11-hour rest periods already mentioned, or

(b) As an alternative your employer can give you two 24-hour rest periods in the week that follows one in which you did not get the entitlement described in (a) above.

Unless your contract provides otherwise your 24-hour rest period referred to above should include a Sunday.

Mrs OBumble

Stheno wrote: »

From citizens info



Rest periods

The definition of a rest period is any time that is not working time. The rest periods set out in the Act are as follows:

(a) You are entitled to 11 consecutive hours rest in any period of 24 hours. In addition you should get 24 consecutive hours rest in any period of 7 days and this should normally follow on from one of the 11-hour rest periods already mentioned, or

(b) As an alternative your employer can give you two 24-hour rest periods in the week that follows one in which you did not get the entitlement described in (a) above.

Unless your contract provides otherwise your 24-hour rest period referred to above should include a Sunday.

So my reading of that is that so long as the OP gets a full two days off at the end of the 2nd week, the situation is within the guidelines.

Snake Plisken

It's hard to know if it's legal or not, I do a lot of driving around for the job and by day the Wednesday of the second week, I do feel tired, now we do get paid overtime for the oncall weekends, but i'd gladly give up some of that for a rest day in the second week. O', not sure if what Mrs OBumble reads the situation that the weekend of the following week applies as it's 12 days in a row. Also what's the legal amount of time you can work in one week? somebody told me it's 48 hours is that correct?

Stheno

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

So my reading of that is that so long as the OP gets a full two days off at the end of the 2nd week, the situation is within the guidelines.

Yes that is how I also read it

Snake Plisken wrote: »

It's hard to know if it's legal or not, I do a lot of driving around for the job and by day the Wednesday of the second week, I do feel tired, now we do get paid overtime for the oncall weekends, but i'd gladly give up some of that for a rest day in the second week. O', not sure if what Mrs OBumble reads the situation that the weekend of the following week applies as it's 12 days in a row. Also what's the legal amount of time you can work in one week? somebody told me it's 48 hours is that correct?

The working hours act calls out forty eight hours a week as the maximum HOWEVER, that is calculated as an average figure for a period of a minimum of 4 months (approx 17.33 weeks which I'm rounding down to 17 weeks for calculation purposes)

So if you do 9-5:30 M-F ordinarily that's a 37.5 hour week, and over a four month period adding in the eight additional days for the weekends, then you have a total amount of time worked of 37.5*13 and 52.5 * 4 which totals up to 487.5+210 = 697.5 hours which averages out over that time as an average of 41.02 hours so well below the 48

Edit to add: I once had a role where I worked up to 70 hours a week but when averaged out over the four months it was less than 48 per week in that time frame, so it was within the boundaries of the WTA

dwayneshintzy

At the minute I'm working 7pm-3am, and my shift changes at the end of March to 2-10 including weekends, with Thursday and Friday off. As a result, I'll be working 10 days in a row when the shift changes (Monday-Sunday one week, Monday-Wednesday the next)......this was actually a shift change that I hadn't been informed about, I just happened to look at the schedule yesterday (was originally also supposed to be scheduled M-F 7pm-3am in April).

Not very happy with working the 10 days straight (there is no extra compensation, in fact I'll be earning less as I'll be off my late shift allowance); are they technically within their rights to do it, though?

Stheno

dwayneshintzy wrote: »

At the minute I'm working 7pm-3am, and my shift changes at the end of March to 2-10 including weekends, with Thursday and Friday off. As a result, I'll be working 10 days in a row when the shift changes (Monday-Sunday one week, Monday-Wednesday the next)......this was actually a shift change that I hadn't been informed about, I just happened to look at the schedule yesterday (was originally also supposed to be scheduled M-F 7pm-3am in April).

Not very happy with working the 10 days straight (there is no extra compensation, in fact I'll be earning less as I'll be off my late shift allowance); are they technically within their rights to do it, though?

i think they are

dwayneshintzy

Yeah i kinda figured they might be, even though I'm not exactly ecstatic about it. Sure I'll ask HR anyway.