Evening all,

It’s been slim pickings in the oil & gas world for a few years now but I’ve today been offered a job with Baker/GE in Nailsea, near Bristol.

Having spent the past few months labouring I’m tempted to accept this PAYE role. Trouble is, there is a wild contradiction in the contract terms regarding working hours. I have a day per week consulting work on the side which I need to keep going as the PAYE salary is too low to cover household expenses.

Anyone work for Baker / GE? What hours are you typically working? Which position?

The contract was emailed out by a robot with no opportunity to discuss. It’s an accept/decline job.

I work in oil and gas but not for Baker Hughes and I can’t imagine they would be keen with you having another job unless you’ve explicitly agreed to not be working 100% Full time equivalent.

Can’t help on the contract/hours, but I work for an O&G company, and for an upcoming job Baker were the only company who said they could get the people… several of the bigs boys didn’t submit a bid as they didn’t have the staff.

Recent experience has shown that there is a real shortage of skills and equipment, so if activity picks up you could be in a good position!

Also in oil and gas – not baker

Our contracts explicitly state no other jobs in oil and gas. Other industries with explicit written permission from management.

Appreciate all the advice.

Our contracts explicitly state no other jobs in oil and gas.

Strangely, there is nothing in the contract preventing me from having a second job so long as it is not with a direct competitor (which it isn’t). My concern is having the time to fit in the second job. Here’s the contradiction in the contract:

“Hours of Work: Your normal hours of work are 37.5 hours per week, Monday to Friday”. This is consistent with what they told me at interview.

and then a few pages on:

“..normally it is not intended that you will work on average in excess of 48 hours per week. However, should business needs require, you agree to work in excess of an average of 48 hours per week”

Bit of a difference between the normals, eh?

I’m just trying to get a feel for what they actually, typically work in order to figure out whether I can realistically fit in the second job. It’s also 100 miles from home so I’ll have to Air BnB it for a while

I used to deal with them when they were Vetco Gray, and they were a good bunch. Having had more recent experience with GE O&G in Italy tells me that they will probably have changed the V G team, and probably not for the better.

I suspect the clause about 48h is related to working time directive maximum hours ‘opt-out’ more than anything else.

..normally it is not intended that you will work on average in excess of 48 hours per week. However, should business needs require, you agree to work in excess of an average of 48 hours per week

That is some sort of EU directive thing about not working more than 48 hours in a week. It’s pretty standard for all companies to get you to sign something along those lines so that if you work 49 hours one week they don’t end up in court. I’m sure someone with proper employment law / HR knowledge will come along and explain it properly. I’ve signed one (probably about 5 years back when it was first introduced) and I work in injection moulding, so definitely not just and oil and gas thing.

Cheers. In that context it makes more sense. Not had a ‘proper’ job in the UK before!

Yep just getting you to opt out of the EU working time directive. Sign the contract, get on with your consulting, it should all be fine. Any issues then cross that bridge when it arrives.

IIRC they cant force you to sign an opt out of the EU working time directive, it’s usually given to you as a separate piece of paper to sign with the contract.

You can opt out of the opt out too. So if you sign it you can revoke it and cant be asked to work 48h+.

Out of interest, what’s your consultancy if not O&G related? Or are you support staff in IT?

With a competitor
My contract is 37.5 hours, if I booked less than 40 in any week consistently I’d be on the redundancy list… there are regular drives to book 48 hours where we are ‘encouraged to book 48’ as quarters close and redundancy lists are drawn up.

In real terms I am mostly closer to 60 hours and if international travel time was included way above that. It’s a never ending cycle of meeting performance goals driven by quarterly redundancy of “Low performers” who are then replaced by disposable new hires who either sink or swim.

I lost touch with my mates at Baker after the acquisition..

I hope you lot are getting paid an absolute fistful of cash for this voluntary slavery.

it’s for the EU working directive, which probably shouldn’t be in the contract now as we’re leaving the EU, maybe… It’s standard stuff really for a Baker contract, it was on mine from 15 years ago.

I was an accountant at BHI (BHBSS then BOT) in Aberdeen before the all the acquisitions took place. I enjoyed it when I worked there but some colleague who are still there don’t enjoy it anymore. They’ve been through the Halliburton/GE acquisitions and Baker is back up for sale so it’s been years of uncertainty and redundancies which seems to have taken a toll on staff morale

My contract is 37.5 hours, if I booked less than 40 in any week consistently I’d be on the redundancy list… there are regular drives to book 48 hours where we are ‘encouraged to book 48’ as quarters close and redundancy lists are drawn up.

In real terms I am mostly closer to 60 hours and if international travel time was included way above that. It’s a never ending cycle of meeting performance goals driven by quarterly redundancy of “Low performers” who are then replaced by disposable new hires who either sink or swim.

Stevextc that has Slb written all over it

I was thinking exactly the same about Stevextc (Former SLB Field Engineer almost 20 years ago)

I was thinking exactly the same about Stevextc (Former SLB Field Engineer almost 20 years ago)

Yep .. though it’s not SLB it certainly could be!

They have been doing this for a good 2 decades. It’s only the last 5 my current employer did this.

I hope you lot are getting paid an absolute fistful of cash for this voluntary slavery

Depends how you look at it… per real hour ? Or per 40hrs ?
Don’t even get me onto non claimable expenses… and I mean real expenses like visa’s and police registration. Forced to sign it was not a claimable expense before they pay the rest like flights and hotel bills. (The police registration was on the hotel bill)

Non claimable legitimate expenses…..what are those.

That’s low from any company.