Ourmaninthenorth -Don’t matter about being saleried – working without 11 hrs off between attendences is illegal ( I think – telling a lawyer the law – gulp)and you can’t opt out of that ( there are some exceptions IIRC) but not for lawyers!

Hope you get your Jam tomorrow. I decided to have a life now and bread and water tomorrow!

My wife is a nurse, and all the nurses on her ward have opted out of the European working regulations…

It’s not illegal to opt-out, but it’s illegal to force employees to opt-out.

signing a contract of employment is choice.

If the whole of one part of a workforce has it in their contracts, that is illegal since it is no longer voluntary (the only obvious choice being not to work there).

The opt out is going soon anyway.

as long as you are at your workstation on time you are OK
you are employed from the times stated on your contract
if you worked in a factory with machines would he apply the same principal i.e. that you must be in work before your shift starts to ensure all the oil, coolant levels are ok, the hydraulic pressure is set,etc.etc. so you can start producing ay the start of your shift – if he did he’d get lynched ! it’s bad management machine/workplace set up time should be factored into all jobs.

the working time directive is there to protect yours and your colleagues,mates,families health and quality of life – don’t let the bosses make a mockery of it !

i’ve tackled numerous employers on both of these issue and won every time – join a union, get others at work to join, organise. and don’t let the ‘credit crunch’ hardtimes b#llsh#t be used to excuse bad management, or bully you into accepting cr@p !!!!

PK Ripper – I’m glad I don’t work for you too. Perhaps you’re getting your own work issues mixed up in your head with the OP’s and so coming across a bit hardline, but his situation sounds like a clear cut case of an employer trying to get extra hours for free.

In the sort of work enviroment where people start at 9 and finish at 5 (or more likely 5.30 nowadays), it’s reasonable to expect staff to be at their desks and switching on their PC at 9.

If their employer is taking advantage as much as Ourman’s, then he/she is very wise to allow him a bit of latitude on start times.

Ourman – Isn’t it dangerous for lawyers to work such long hours?

Don’t they end up putting the wrong clauses in the wrong documents and giving half the company away by mistake?

bit of give and take at my place. It’s my daughter’s birthday tomorrow so I’ll be opening presents first thing and late in, and then coming home early in time for tea and cake with the grandparents tomorrow. But that’s why I’ve just finished doing some stuff now at home, so i can have those couple of hours ‘for free’

I really feel for people who either can’t or don’t want to extract that flexibility from their bosses. Mines a **** in many ways but on this point he is at least reasonable.

A mate of mine had an interesting misinterpretation of the working time directive scenario. He’s a consultant for a big consulting firm. Coming up to the end of the year, HR suddenly panicked on the WTD and sent out an edict that basically he couldn’t work for about the last 3 weeks before Xmas for fear of exceeding his hours. Once the year clicked over, and the slate was clean, the project was 3 weeks behind and he had to put in almost all the missed hours to catch it up again! But at least HR ticked their box, eh?

Never mind the rules, just don’t work for @rseholes, and it will all work out.

Sh*t does anyone here actually enjoy their job and not see it as some fascist/capitalist conspiracy to keep you shackled and chained? ‘Workers of the world you have nothing to loose but your chains’ anyone? I mean really, wouldn’t it just be easier all round if you all had a job that you actually enjoyed doing and therefore were quite happy to be in the office half an hour early without feeling you were being exploited?

Of course I do understand that your manager plays a seriously big part in that experience. People join companies but they leave [/i]bad/poor managers, i.e. it’s not usually the company that people become disillusioned with.

Sh*t does anyone here actually enjoy their job and not see it as some fascist/capitalist conspiracy to keep you shackled and chained?

Generally the people who have to wait 20 minutes for a computer to boot would rather be somewhere else.

“Never mind the rules, just don’t work for @rseholes, and it will all work out.”

I wish…

Hope you get your Jam tomorrow. I decided to have a life now and bread and water tomorrow!

I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that, since the jam isn’t likely to materialise, perhaps there’s other stuff I can do. And bread and water tastes just fine….

I’ve just rocked in 8)

Right, coffee time.