After 7 night shifts in a row how much rest am I entitled to?

rich.d.berry

Hi. I've never posted on this forum before so I hope I'm doing it right.

I've been rostered to work 7 night shifts in a row from Wednesday night next week to Wednesday morning the week after. I have then been given the Thursday off before I'm rostered to start a series of 6 early shifts on Friday morning.

I approached my manager saying that I do not think that only one day off is enough time for me to rest and adjust to an early start. He says that he is within his rights to ask me to do it because there are exactly 48 hours between the end of the night shifts and the start of the morning shifts.

I've looked for information online and found that Citizens Advice gives some information. It states that for any 7 day period I'm entitled to 24 hours of rest plus 11 hours between shifts. Based on this alone, it seems that I can refuse to work the 7 days in a row without a 24 hour rest period.

Am I understanding this correctly?

It also states that exceptions are made "Where shift workers who change shift and cannot avail themselves of the rest period are exempted (in respect of the daily and weekly rest periods)."

I'm not sure how this impacts on me because my working hours are irregular. We are, on average, given 2 days off in every week, but sometimes I could work 10 days in a row before I get 2 days off. This occurs occasionally in order to get a full weekend off and is not really a problem if I'm working day shifts, which is my normal shift.

On average I do 2 night shifts in a 4 week period to cover days off and holidays for my colleagues who are night workers. My normal shift would be a start time of 7am, 10am, 1pm or 3pm. The night shift starts at 11pm.

I'm only complaining because after such a long stint of nights I will find it very difficult to adjust to a 7am start and I feel that only 48 hours between shifts is insufficient time to make that transition.

Sorry if this post was long winded, but I thought that context may be important. Thanks for taking the time to read it.

Nody

rich.d.berry wrote: »

Hi. I've never posted on this forum before so I hope I'm doing it right.

I've been rostered to work 7 night shifts in a row from Wednesday night next week to Wednesday morning the week after. I have then been given the Thursday off before I'm rostered to start a series of 6 early shifts on Friday morning.

I approached my manager saying that I do not think that only one day off is enough time for me to rest and adjust to an early start. He says that he is within his rights to ask me to do it because there are exactly 48 hours between the end of the night shifts and the start of the morning shifts.

I've looked for information online and found that Citizens Advice gives some information. It states that for any 7 day period I'm entitled to 24 hours of rest plus 11 hours between shifts. Based on this alone, it seems that I can refuse to work the 7 days in a row without a 24 hour rest period.

Am I understanding this correctly?

If you got 48h between shift A ending night and shift B starting in the morning you got the 24h rest period and covered the 11h part as well. The 24h rest period is exactly that; 24h + 11h between two shifts and not an additional 24h to your two days off per week.