Work entitlements

scojones

If this is the wrong forum for this, I really apologise but I am looking for the legal stance on this so I hope this discussion can remain in this forum, even though it is about work entitlements.

The company I'm with are rolling out a 24/7 work rotation shift, including weekends pretty soon. I was informed about the 24/7 shift - with Saturdays only, not Sundays. But that's fine.

What I want to know is, legally, what is the minimum percentage that has to be paid for shift allowance. We will have rotating 8, 10 and 12 hour shifts. Does the percentage increase for 12 hour shifts of should the shift allowance be the same for these three shifts? Would night work increase the shift allowance?

Also, they want to introduce a buddy system, whereby we are on call 24/7 incase our mate is out sick, and if he is we have to come in and cover. Should we be getting extra pay for being on call for this service? I mean.. we can't exactly go get drunk.. if you get me.

Any info would be very much appreciated.

Gobán Saor

There are virtually no legal requirements dealing with shift pay. There is no legal minimum percentage for shift pay or for night work. There is a lot of collective agreements and/or custom and practise in various industries (mostly unionised) but this generally doesn't have legal effect. As a rule of thumb, 20-30% shift allowance would not be unusual for a 24/7 shift. On-call is tricky. An absolute requirement to be available for call has to be paid for. This is quite different from being called and coming in voluntarily if it suits you. You really need to get into a union to sort this sort of thing out.

seamus

Your obligations are set out in your contract. There is no legal entitlement to shift allowance. There is no legal entitlement to allowance for a "buddy" system. However, such a system would be a change of contract, which your employer would require you to sign.

Be aware of legal maximum working hours per week, and entitlements for Sunday working, which would be a factor in this "buddy" system.

Overheal

Are 'on-call' hours acrrueable for working hours per week? And what are the entitlements for Sundays? I can't find that anywhere...

Gobán Saor

I *think* on-call hours (where you are strictly required to be available) are counted as 50% of the time elapsed for eg the purposes of the Organisation of Working Time Act, Minimum Wage, etc. If you're actually called in the time starts being counted as 100%. So a call-in that happens 4 hours into an 8 hour shift would equate to 4/2 + 4 = 6 hours on duty, etc.

I vaguely remember an ECJ ruling on this (possibly for hospital doctors?) but can't recall the details. I shall try to come up with something more definitive.

wellsir

I'm trying to negotiate a fair on call rate with my employer.
I work in IT Dept and they need on call service at the weekend....and finally there was an outage over the weekend that ended up with heads rolling.

Is it different from other types of jobs, like a nurse on call?