staying behind after your shift...

[missjef]

(sorry this is probably the wrong cat. but this is the most popular!)
Does anyone know whether employers have a legal right to keep you behind after your shift has meant to have ended to carry on with your work? I work in a busy womens fashion retailers, and everynight we have to stay behind half an hour after the shop closes to tidy the shopfloor - which is fair enough because we get paid for this and this is when our shift is meant to end after the half an hour, but almost all the time it run's over the half an hour. tonight we stayed for over 15 minutes after our shift was meant to end, and we do not get paid for this!

i have a couple of times as have others queried this and have been told that we have to stay for up to half an hour unpaid and it is in our contracts, i have looked in the employee handbook and cannot find anything to back this up anywhere!

i just wondered what your view's of this were?

many thanks in advance!
M x

[dot.hawkes]

No this is wrong, you should either be on the rota for the extra time or you leave when your shift is finished. This is unprofessional practise and a sign of bad management skills. If you are not being paid for the time you are not covered by the employment liability insurance, if you are accumulating the time for lieu time then you are.

[missjef]

Thanks very much! The annoying thing is where i work it is mainly teenagers (me included) and not all of them are willing to all stick together and say 'right our shift's finished we're leaving'. and one person saying something doesn't do anything. I dont know what we can do though when it is the store manager who impliments this stupid rule!

[dot.hawkes]

It can't be a rule, the store manager cannot change employment legislation, you should ask if you can take back the lieu time you have accumulated, keep a record of it, if you work 15 minutes over your set shift you should be paid for the extra 15 minutes or accrue the time. I bet the manager uses the lieu time they have accumulated.

[missjef]

of course the manager uses their lieu time!
Whenever i have questioned this i have always been told 'well sometimes you get out when the shop closes when it has been quiet so it all adds up!' this is true, but very rarely. Plus i'm not sure but i think if that happened we dont get paid for the half an hour we havent worked so it doesn't add up in the long run.

[dot.hawkes]

ahhhh I see what is happening, your manager has budgeted hours, say 250 man hours PW, and they can use less, but not more, say you are contracted to 20 hours pweek, but they let you go early, say hal an hour, you still get paid for 20 hours but the manager 'banks' the hal hour, and you owe it, so when you stay late, it is time you have already been paid for. i do that, expecially coming up to sale time as the wage budgets are very tight.
If that isn't clear to you , then ask the manager if that is what is happening, they cannot intimidtae you into this confusion, they have to be straight with you.

[missjef]

i see what you mean but this isn't what happens if it happened like that i wouldn't mind..
the thing is we will be out later for say one night in 3/4 weeks running then only have one night out early in the month so it doesnt add up because those 3 or 4 nights out later adds up to usually around 40/45 minutes.
we only get let out early once a month if that. where as usually all the sunday/saturday staff especially are out late every weekend. hope that makes sense!

[Peter Pedant]

Hi Dot
Good answers.

The problem with exploiting youngsters is that they grow up thinking that playing fast and loose is OK. In the Eclipse year, one of the firms said to all the youngsters it had used to keep doors etc at the Gigs, 'I just can't pay you'
and seemed to expect them to say - yeah OK we'll do it for free then. My comment was that it sounded as tho' hehad been trading while he knew he was insolvent.

[mountainboo]

If you worked out the amount of 30 min over time you had done over the past month, shall we say, I bet, from what your saying, it would come to atleast a couple of hours a month, if not more. Dot.hawkes is spot on, if you have an accident or there is an incident during this time I would bet that you wouldn't have a leg to stand on. I am disgusted at the way these retailers treat staff, BHS being one of the worst. They are in no way allowed to keep you on for half an hour or more without being paid.

[missjef]

It just gets ridiculous how they think they can treat us 'younger' staff, all the 'older' staff members get certain shifts to fit in with their kids being in school and that never alters where as all us others get put down for shifts here there and everywhere and only find out about it when the rota is put up usually the week before! then if we can't do a certain shift then it is our respoonsibilty to get someone else to do (which is fair enough if it was in enough advance).

[mountainboo]

Unfortunately you do get peanalised for being a young single person, when I was younger I certainly was. They should really give you more notice than a week. You should tell them in advance days that you cant/dont want to work, then its's down to them to sort it out. You really must nip this over time thing in the bud though, dont let the ******** walk all over you.

[missjef]

whenever i have thing coming up which means i wont be able to work certain days or work the end shift i always make sure i give enough notice. though a few times even a month in advance i have been told that's not enough notice even though the rota's havent been done! and another couple of times i have written down exactly when i cannot work then when it has come to it i have been put down for it anyway and told i need to sort out cover!

more recently i was most annoyed when i informed the manager i would not be able to make a few days (a month in advance) as one of my grandparents has been diagnosed with cancer and it was a very difficult time for me and the family and i would have found it upsetting, i was told this would be a problem and i probably wouldnt be able to get the time off, yet after my mum had a word it was all ok. however when it came to a week before i wanted to double check i was still ok to have that time off and was told "well i dont remember you mentioning any of this!".
looking back at this it was disgusting to be treat this way, given that it was a rather unpredictable circumstance and i had given a month of notice regarding time off.

[leelapops]

missjef, your employer is rude and ignorant. You shouldn't have to put up with this kind of treatment at all, and you are being taken advantage of, as are your colleagues. Is it your line or store manager who is implementing all these made-up "rules"? Is there any way you can go to the next-highest management level to make a serious complaint?

You sound as if you treat your employer with respect, so why can't they return the favour? They need to recognise that they will lose staff if they don't learn to be courteous, and treat each individual employee respectfully.

It's a shame your colleagues won't join together in collective action: if your employer saw this, they would be very worried! I suppose it's a power thing-they have it, their staff don't. There shouldn't be such a marked hierarchy: it sounds like a s*** place to work. Is it worth looking elsewhere? Or is it otherwise a good job?

[floutastic]

I used to work in a busy clothes shop too and the same thing happened with me but we didn't used to get paid for ANY of the extra time we had to stay behind to 'close down'! It was a joke, if our shift finished at 6 we would normally get out around half past or sometimes even later but we would have stopped getting paid at 6!!! I often used to complain but most of the other girls were only 16-17 and didn't like to speak up with me. I eventually walked out one night when the till was down and they demanded we all put the money in to balance the till!!!!

[leelapops]

floutastic, that is shocking! I can't believe they expected that of you! I don't blame you for leaving: people can only put up with so much, but employers definitely take advantage of younger staff who aren't so confident about their rights, and what makes them uncomfortable.

[missjef]

floutastic - i cant believe they said you all had to make up the money in the till! good on you for walking out!

leelapops it's the store manager, i have no idea how they even became a manager! i don't know who i could go to do report any of this, plus i know if the manager found out it would be hell working there. quite a few members of staff have actually been reduced to tears after speaking with the manager!
It's an alright job, at the moment i am trying to find something else though as i need full time hours to get more money!

[ruthann58]

is this a chain of shops, if so why not write to head office and complain you dont have to put your name on it

[innocenti]

I did actually feel sorry for you missjef and thought you were being treated unfairly, so why bring up about working mothers and their shifts? Totally uncalled for.

[missjef]

innocenti i didnt mean to offend anyone by that, i just think its unfair that the shifts can be 'set' permenantly for some people but not for others, i dont think there is anything wrong with working mothers having set shifts i just wish that shifts could be 'set' for everyone, rather than being all over the place, just think it would make it easier for everyone.