Personal Mobile phone & Obligations of Employee

Jacob81

Hi folks,

I am helping my friend with a difficult employer.

To explain background: My friend manages a business & is paid a small salary which isn't matching up to the responsibilities. They approached employer looking for a raise. Was turned down. Recently they are keeping the business open to fill in for staff that arent turning up. Basically receive an hour's notice and has to go to work. This time is not returned to them & is adding an extra 40 hours of work a month. So I proposed they look for overtime rate. Denied!

So my new approach is to help them be uncooperative in a passive manner..

One idea I have had is that they should tell the employer that no one is to call or text her on her personal mobile to deal with business related issues. This means it is going to be difficult for them to give her an hours notice

I am assuming there is no obligation on an employee to answer calls or texts to a personal phone. After all employee pays the bill. It is their property etc. I cannot find any confirmation of this online.. Anyone able to assist?

Thanks,

J.

seamus

There's no obligation on the employee to do such. At the same time, there's nothing which says that an employer can't ask an employee to make themselves contactable outside working hours. As a member of management, part of the person's job may include this problem of having to do work at short notice for the good of the business.

Ensuring that would require making themselves contactable at short notice.

It's a grey area basically. If the employee was going out of their way to be uncontactable then that could be described as detrimental to the working of the business and therefore a failure on their part in their role.

Ultimately if the employee got fired, the company's argument would be that the employee was putting the company at risk by not maintaining their responsibility of covering for staff shortages at late notice.
Your friend couldn't really play the "they were being unreasonable" card because ignoring business calls is equally an unreasonable action.

Your friend needs to not play tit-for-tat games. He/she is the one with a job they can lose. Their employer can find another manager on the street tomorrow.

The primary concern here is the ridiculous working hours and lack of overtime. They should contact NERA for professional advice and assistance.

allibastor

Good point to contact NERA with un-reasonable working conditions.

but an employer can only use an employee's private phone number for exceptional occurances, ie, not all the time only when something unprecidented happened. if the employer is using the lads phone number as a main contact for staff to use then employemtn law would dicate that an appropriote method of contact should be established. this means is the employer wants your friend to be contacted on a regualr basis and use a phone for such, they must provide a phone.

that said it is an issue which must be thought out, as said above the employer could just say fair enough and let your friend go over it if they really wanted to. they could just chose not to answer calls and messages and say the phone was in the car, they have no requirement to keep the phone on them at all times as it is private

seamus

allibastor wrote: »

if the employer is using the lads phone number as a main contact for staff to use then employemtn law would dicate that an appropriote method of contact should be established. this means is the employer wants your friend to be contacted on a regualr basis and use a phone for such, they must provide a phone.

Can you quote the relevant employment law which says this?

allibastor

seamus wrote: »

Can you quote the relevant employment law which says this?

what, you mean how an employer must provide reasonable tools/ technology for use in the implementation of the employees role? how an employer is to provide the nessesary accesibility for the employee to carry out thier work functions?. its an interpretation of employment law dude, if the employee has to use thier own personal phone in the daily duties of their work function you can argue that the employer is not providing the nessesary tools for the role if you want to avoid using your own phone. also as the phone is private property the giving out of a personal phone number by the employer for function connected to work, as far as i know is not allowed without the employees express authorisation in each case. would you let your boss give out your number to staff to be contacted in when they cant make it in to work?

BostonB

Why don't they simply move to a job with better hours?

doolox

There are no other jobs at the moment.