Unpaid work in multi national retailer

A_Sober_Paddy

I've worked a good bit in retail(well in fact the best part of 12 years in retail)

I have always thought that part of the job included unpaid work, but a buddy just linked me to this

https://thesecretassociate.wordpress.com/2018/01/02/unpaid-work/

A blog from someone calling themselves the secret associate? They work in Holland and barrett it seems and they claim that there is a lot of unpaid work for no return.

Maybe a former emplyee unhappy, but they claim that managers will routinely work 193 hours unpaid work over the year and receive nothing in the way of bonus...

Are things that bad out there in the world of retail...

They also claim that store managers get a wage of €27,500 a year in stores turning over €1 million a year

I dunno maybe they have a good pension scheme to balance this out

Fr_Dougal

“A buddy”, it’s a brand new blog.

Del2005

A_Sober_Paddy wrote: »

I've worked a good bit in retail(well in fact the best part of 12 years in retail)

I have always thought that part of the job included unpaid work, but a buddy just linked me to this

https://thesecretassociate.wordpress.com/2018/01/02/unpaid-work/

A blog from someone calling themselves the secret associate? They work in Holland and barrett it seems and they claim that there is a lot of unpaid work for no return.

Maybe a former emplyee unhappy, but they claim that managers will routinely work 193 hours unpaid work over the year and receive nothing in the way of bonus...

Are things that bad out there in the world of retail...

They also claim that store managers get a wage of €27,500 a year in stores turning over €1 million a year

I dunno maybe they have a good pension scheme to balance this out

That's called working for a salary. Loads of jobs pay salaries and plenty of people on salaries work unpaid hours.

A_Sober_Paddy

Fr_Dougal wrote: »

“A buddy”, it’s a brand new blog.

Yeah a buddy who just sent it to me and 5 others knows the lad who posted the blog his trying to get it to many eyes. I do have doubts that pay is that poor or that staff work that many unpaid hours. But have you ever seen their reviews on glassdoor about Holland and Barrett :eek:

If true its shocking considering how expensive their stuff is...

Dr Brown

Most of the stuff in Holland and barrett can be bought from amazon for half the price.

buried

Try working for yourself. That's taking "unpaid work" to a whole new level G

A_Sober_Paddy

buried wrote: »

Try working for yourself. That's taking "unpaid work" to a whole new level G

yeah i can only imagine, but if you work for yourselves you at least have some autonomy.

But a company which sold for nearly 2 billion a few months back, it just strikes me a incredible greed.

Fair enough managers, who are on salary, but hourly paid staff too...surely thats not legal

buried

A_Sober_Paddy wrote: »

yeah i can only imagine, but if you work for yourselves you at least have some autonomy.

But a company which sold for nearly 2 billion a few months back, it just strikes me a incredible greed.

Fair enough managers, who are on salary, but hourly paid staff too...surely thats not legal

Shareholders Paddy, and yeah, your right. self employed do have that autonomy, but it comes at a cost in other areas. Most of the time I feel like I'm working for my suppliers. That's the cost I suppose. Multi Nationals have to work for the shady world of shareholders. That's the cost that they put on you. Try to get out of it, set up your own thing.

Vic_08

Dr Brown wrote: »

Most of the stuff in Holland and barrett can be bought from amazon for half the price.

Most of the stuff in Holland and Barrett shouldn't be bought at all.

Fad superfoods and quack remedies, they are just corporate snake-oil salesmen.

It shouldn't be any surprise that a company whose main business is selling questionable "health" products at vastly inflated prices are also a horrible employer.

Buford T. Justice XIX

Mod note:Sorry folks, I'm closing this for review. We will get back to you on this in the morning.

Buford T. Justice

Buford T. Justice XIX

Mod note: Reopened, sorry about the delay folks,

Buford T. Justice

ohnonotgmail

193 hours a year is less than 4 hours a week. I dont see a store manager putting in an extra 45 minutes a day as out of the ordinary.

Ask any manager in a company, and he/she will likely be doing at least an extra ten hours a week on top of their formal hours. It's generally the price for advancement in a company.

All jobs tend to ask for some extra unpaid work... Don't want to do it? Then don't be surprised when you don't get that promotion. Simple.

bucketybuck

Deleted User wrote: »

All jobs tend to ask for some extra unpaid work... Don't want to do it? Then don't be surprised when you don't get that promotion. Simple.

And for managers its not even being "asked" most of the time, not for those individual bits and pieces. Nobody from corporate is asking you to stay an hour late catching up on paperwork, its more that **** needs doing and its on you to get it done.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

That annual figure is a mere 4 or 5 hours per week. For a salaried manager that is small fry. I often put in more than that when I worked. It was no hardship.

TrustedApple

My contact says 37.5.

I work a extra 2 or 3 hours a week !!!. Bring my laptop home and some days I end up checking emails when I get home.

Do I get paid not a hope in he but sometimes you have to work the extra mile. You can't be expected to be paid for every min you work over your daily working hours it just won't happen!!!. It's basicly **** that needs to be done some times. I cross over with the us west cost they don't come on to 3pm Irish time of course I have to stay back for meetings !!!.

Dr Brown

Deleted User wrote: »

Ask any manager in a company, and he/she will likely be doing at least an extra ten hours a week on top of their formal hours. It's generally the price for advancement in a company.

All jobs tend to ask for some extra unpaid work... Don't want to do it? Then don't be surprised when you don't get that promotion. Simple.

There is a saying that "you get nothing for free in this life" but that doesn't seem to apply to employers.

King of Kings

27k for being a store manager is utter dirt.

Andrew Beef

Most people who have a modicum of responsibility or seniority work “extra hours”; but then most senior people don’t get paid by the hour.

Donald Trump

If it's only affecting the managers then they can just up and leave if they don't like it. Nobody is forcing them to do it.

Donald Trump

King of Kings wrote: »

27k for being a store manager is utter dirt.

13.31 per hour for 39 hour week for 52 weeks.

You'd make more giving handjobs to Junkies.

Or so I've heard

A_Sober_Paddy

Donald Trump wrote: »

If it's only affecting the managers then they can just up and leave if they don't like it. Nobody is forcing them to do it.

Link in OP suggests hourly paid staff are doing unpaid work.

The figure quoted for the salary for a store manager is about correct from what a recruiter told me in relation to the company in question. It's in line with that general staff in penny's get

whatdoicare

Most retail jobs I've worked in do this thing where you finish at say 6pm but you stay back to clean up or face off shelves so really it's 630pm but you don't get paid for the 30 mins, that's 2 and a half to three hours extra for free. Once I got promoted to assistant manager and then onto manager the extra free hours got longer and longer as I had to come in before I got paid to set up the till and stay after everyone to close off the till, ring in the end of day and then lock up.

A certain popular kids jewellery shop was the worst for it, if you worked as an assistant or 3rd key from 9am to 9pm (which I very often did) you really started at 830am or 8am if there was a conference call to be had and finished at 10pm. I regularly worked up to 80 hours a week for feck all pay when my manager quit and was never replaced. I ended up getting no days off or breaks at one stage. Thought I was going to die.

Then I got past the probation time and got salaried and my pay halved straight away - I handed in my keys that day and walked away. Same pay as a regular assistant for double the hours and quadrouple the stress! No thanks.

FTA69

Workers shouldn't be working for nothing, you're simply giving up your valuable free time to make someone else rich - someone who's obviously too f*cking greedy to pay people for the work they do. This becomes even more laughable when we're talking about big companies with huge profits.

Can anyone tell me why in particular an employee should be expected to work for free?

CeilingFly

Dr Brown wrote: »

Most of the stuff in Holland and barrett can be bought from amazon for half the price.

You're picking the wrong amazon seller - 65%+++ lower than h&b who are horrendously priced.

They are known for their hard act on targets with managers and area managers.

Managers here get circa 30-36k, area managers 40-55k

Its salaried and "average" working week is 40 hours - remember a working week excludes lunch, so 40 hours would be 5 days of 9.30-6.30

mada82

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

193 hours a year is less than 4 hours a week. I dont see a store manager putting in an extra 45 minutes a day as out of the ordinary.

Should unpaid work ever be acceptable?

Your Face

The manger could be crap at his job and has to make up the workload by doing extra hours.

FTA69

FTA69 wrote: »

Workers shouldn't be working for nothing, you're simply giving up your valuable free time to make someone else rich - someone who's obviously too f*cking greedy to pay people for the work they do. This becomes even more laughable when we're talking about big companies with huge profits.

Can anyone tell me why in particular an employee should be expected to work for free?

I must admit that I don't get this kind of logic. Every job I've ever done has had some extra work that came usually after the official working day was finished. In return, I usually received an acknowledgment in my records or a "thank you", which often translated later into bonuses or factored into promotions.

Now, I get it. If you're working at a petrol station with absolutely no desire to stay long-term, it makes sense that you wouldn't invest in the company/career. But if you're working for an international company with the idea of furthering your career, and gain promotions, it stands to reason that there will be extra requirements. Why? Because it does show a commitment to the job.

It's not a matter of working for free. It's the matter of investing time with future returns. To show that you're different from the other employees that solely do the bare minimum. Just makes sense to me.

Guess I've been indoctrinated.

On a side note... If you feel this way against working for free, or working extra... don't go into programming. You'll do craptons of extra hours to meet release deadlines.

Andrew Beef

FTA69 wrote: »

Workers shouldn't be working for nothing, you're simply giving up your valuable free time to make someone else rich - someone who's obviously too f*cking greedy to pay people for the work they do. This becomes even more laughable when we're talking about big companies with huge profits.

Can anyone tell me why in particular an employee should be expected to work for free?

In pursuit of variable pay and salary increases / promotions...

c_man

FTA69 wrote: »

Workers shouldn't be working for nothing, you're simply giving up your valuable free time to make someone else rich - someone who's obviously too f*cking greedy to pay people for the work they do. This becomes even more laughable when we're talking about big companies with huge profits.

Can anyone tell me why in particular an employee should be expected to work for free?

Because they get mad respect on boards.ie?

FTA69

Also I'm not referring to the odd day at work whereby there's some extra stuff to be done and people need to stay behind, that's obviously part of life and I've nothing against giving people a dig out. My bone of contention is that when it becomes a regular thing, there is absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be an overtime scheme or some sort of remuneration for work done. Likewise, many places I know who expect you to stay late a few hours a week to be 'reasonable' would lose their absolute sh*t if you decided to come in a few hours late every few weeks.

Personally I find it sad that the only justification for millions of pounds of basically stolen wages is "if I'm a good boy I might be made a boss one day."

Ted Plain

I think it really depends on the situation. Say you work in a small place and you do an extra bit on top of your stated hours, well I wouldn't really have an issue with that. As long as it's not taking the piss.

In some jobs people put in horrendous hours, but there is an expected payoff down the line for doing so. A solicitor being made partner, for example.

Some time back I read an article about this in a German paper and the tax authorities there actually regard this as fraud, since the worker not being paid means that the taxman does not get his cut of the income tax that would have been due. Not sure if or how they actually pursue such cases, but no doubt it would involve disgruntled ex-employees. Not sure how Revenue here looks at it.

A_Sober_Paddy

Just looking through glass door and the listed salary on there is more like 25,000

https://www.glassdoor.ie/Salary/Holland-and-Barrett-Retail-Store-Manager-Salaries-E36174_D_KO27,40.htm

Assume manager salary would typically vary depending different things like size, turnover etc

But I earn 26,000 a year in my job and it has very limited responsibilities, nothing like the responsibility of running a business