I got the wrong end of the stick when I skim read this on the BBC this morning, I thought they were asking to accrue/earn holiday for overtime i.e. if you worked loads of overtime you may get a couple of days added to your holiday allowance. Way off the mark once I started reading this thread 😯

One business owner quoted on the beeb has 27 employees of which 18 do regular overtime…he threatens to stop overtime if this gets agreed. Surely he should stop relying on overtime for routine work and staff appropriately, overtime at 1.5 rate would normally only make business sense for short term/seasonal blips in trade.

I’ll be watching with interest as it could impact me – at week 45 this year I reckon I’ve probably done 35-40 days voluntary overtime, and 3 or 4 compulsory overtime shifts due to being on-call overnight (although the standby pay/emergency attendance element might make it not count as compulsory)

I don’t see how firms can disguise overtime worked unless its cash-in-hand, wouldn’t most payslips show the basic pay and any additional pay elements separately?

I think the big thing is, there are employers who abuse their employees over this. I know one company that only pay thier staff for a 6hr day, but the staff are expected to make that up to 8-9 with overtime. That way it costs the company less for staff who’re rostered spare, and cuts down on holiday pay quite substantially.

I know one guy who works for them, and due to being on holiday for two weeks after being in the office for a couple weeks without overtime, ended up with his monthly pay being nearly half of his usual pay.

However I think there does need to be some clarification between expected overtime, and voluntary overtime, but there are always employers who’ll try and manipulate the system.

This ruling might affect me to a small extent, as due to working shifts, I can’t claim certain allowances when I’m on holiday, but at most I may end up with a couple hundred pounds, so I’m just going to wait and see what happens.

I think there is one area not yet discussed, and that’ll be the employment agencies where the temps work for them and they bill clients. Mainy thinking of the low-pay temps, who need to work maximum hours to make a living.

Their ’employees’ will be after the money, but the agencies won’t be able to bill their clients. Depending on how retrospective this goes, you could see a load of them go to the wall.

Agreed there are some who took the piss but equally people didn’t have to do the jobs. Personally given the choice of no job vs job I’d be doing the job, even if it was a joke and I agree there are many more the same. On the otherhand if it were me on contracted on shift for 6 hours expected to do three hours overtime a day I’d be going home after six hours until they either got rid of me for only doing my contacted hours or contacted me for nine, either regular or otherwise.

I believe though may be wrong that these cases have been backed via unions who should have been fighting not for better holiday payment terms but for real contacts and real hours for the staff – though doubtless the overtime payments are more lucrative than if they were paid as normal hours.

I’ve no issue with the decision, per my first post, my complaint is that there were two parties to the agreements and one is being screwed because it did what it was told was fine (if clearly morally wrong) and the other gets to have their premium payment and eat it. I imagine that of the decision had gone along the lines of yes they underpaid your holiday as your “overtime ” wasn’t it was normal hours so they’ll have to pay you all your holiday back pay but you’ll have to give them back all the premium payment for doing overtime that wasn’t there would be some serious shouting going on.

Frankly the idea of overtime as anything other than a “we’re in the poo” fix is the problem, if you have 20 hours of extra work a week every week to give out you should be employing someone for those 20 hours not handing it out to people as overtime.

How the ruling will be interpreted is something we’ll have to wait a see. I’ve personally had a few experiences of different takes on holiday pay and one from a flat mate who fell foul of what the ruling is roughly about.

One company I worked for used overtime to meet basic output requirements. They ran a 5 day week on shifts on most of the production lines, a couple ran over 7 days. They used overtime to cover it. But they used a 12 week average of earnings as holiday pay. If you worked 40 hours basic and 8 hours OT at x1.5 on average, then that’s what you got for a week on holiday.

Another ran continental shifts, 4 on 4 off 12 hour shifts, but paid 40 hours basic plus 2 hours OT at normal time. This then equalled the weekly average hours. But they also paid shift allowance on the 40 hours, good attendance bonus, good time keeping bonus, and production target bonus. The basic pay was about 50% of your pay, which is what you got as holiday pay. Not very fair when they advertised the job as £32k, but the basic pay was £16k.

The flat mate took a job at Safeway supermarket, years ago. 12 hour per week contract. In the first 6 months he didn’t work under 40 hours per week. Holiday pay was 12 per week. But they wouldn’t let him have a week off only 12 hours. They ‘required’ him to work his extra hours to keep the store staffed.

I think this may have an effect on the companies that under employ as a policy, or state compulsory OT is required. It may just drive them to use temporary labour through agencies.

And we wonder why UK has poor productivity record. Bad enough that this is being considered, but barking to think about applying it retrospectively. Do these people engage their brains first…..?

And on the same day RR announces that it’s to cut 2600 jobs and we wonder why .

Do we?

“Company sources say that the aviation losses are more closely linked to a general cut in global defence spending, greater productivity after investment in new factories and an end of the development phase of the new Airbus A350 and Dreamliner engines.”

HTH

@Northwind RR’s biggest competitors are in the US, if we look at their labour laws we’ll see a big differential with us here in the UK. I don’t think you’ll see overtime as holiday pay there and I suspect they don’t even get 4 weeks holiday either. I am not in favour of zero hour contracts or of the use of “compulsory” overtime but rulings such as this just push more employers towards the former and either push up costs to the consumer or reduce employment/employment growth or indeed a bit of both

Ah right, so it’s nothing to do with the reasons RR sources are giving. Glad we cleared that up.

I am surprised that this got as far as it did. For compulsory overtime then maybe, but voluntary overtime I don’t see why, it’s voluntary.

For a “normal” Monday to Friday job (even though I work shifts)a weeks holiday would cost you 5 days(or hours worth) of your holiday entitlement.
If people want paying for their Saturday overtime shift as well should they have to use another days Holiday?

The unions will herald it as a great success, as will the overtime factory cats (every factory has some, people who live for and by their overtime, always at work).
However when companies tighten up and vastly reduce overtime, or worse still bring in annualised hours contract (paid for a set number of hours per year, the company can move your days around to suit business needs and eliminated overtime), these people will not be so happy.

Either way it could take years to sort out, if it is even passed fully by the courts

I don’t think you’ll see overtime as holiday pay there and I suspect they don’t even get 4 weeks holiday either

and I reckon you’ve no idea what you are talking about

Their employment rules are totally different to ours, but also vary by state. For example the guys I worked with in NY got the same number of days off per year as we did, they just were called different things (vacation, personal days, family days etc).

All paid days off ?