Anyone who wishes to earn a hefty salary complete with generous overtime payments and bonuses should become a dust man or electrician in Birmingham, according to news this week about the expenditure on employee pay of the local council there. One electrician took home £124,000 including his overtime and bonuses. The dustmen earn about £50,000.
Despite such enviable pay packets swollen partly by overtime, a report, said recently that many employees work long hours of overtime for absolutely nothing. This report was one of the TUC’s hardy perennials. Statistics from the National Statistics Labour Force Survey are used each year by the TUC to measure the value of unpaid overtime. It concluded this time that companies benefitted to the tune of £27 billion last year in free labour.
Blue collar ‘rank and file members with legitimate aspirations and grievances’, as Union leaders of the 1970s used to say are not losing out in the main. Most of the unpaid overtime is worked in London and the South East and it is the hated ‘boss class’ of professionals and managers who normally work the longest for free. If only they had known in 1959 when writing the film ‘I’m alright, Jack!’, it would have been John Le Mesurier’s management consultant doing the suffering not shop steward Peter Seller’s members.
The TUC of course urges employees to work their proper hours – a bit like a work to rule. But what does employment law have to say on overtime pay disputes?
As with all legal questions the answer is, it depends. There are no laws dealing specifically with overtime. It is perfectly legal for some companies to expect staff to work overtime for free. Many have clauses in contracts that say staff are expected to work longer if needed. This is never paid for – though some companies give time off in lieu.
Other companies must pay for every scrap of overtime. It depends entirely on what the employment contract says.
It is not legal to force someone to work an average of more than 48 hours a week for a 17 week period – unless that member of staff has, in writing, opted out of the Working Time Regulations. It is also not legal to make staff work so much unpaid overtime that their hourly pay effectively drops below the minimum wage. This means most employers should be keeping careful records of how long people are working.
Peta Fluendy is employment law consultant at Sutton based De Brett and Co
http://www.debrettlaw.co.uk/
employmentlawconsultant@gmx.com
No Comments on this post