ailbhe | Bang goes that idea

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Well, Rob and I aren't going to get to go out. He worked late last night / this morning so will have to get to bed early tonight, and tomorrow he's scheduled to work late again.

Keeping track of his overtime doesn't help much because he never takes the time off in lieu for normal stuff, he just uses it for appointments and similar. So the domestic side of things never gets caught up.

WHY is work the ultimate priority for everyone? Even when it's past 1 am and you're expected in work at 8:30 am? It doesn't seem *right* that he can't schedule his TOIL for sleeping in, rather than having to eat into our one realistic chance to go out as a couple since four weeks before Linnea was born.

Plus, I've just discovered that my mother-in-law has a key to my house, without my having known about it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

da-pol.livejournal.com

I absolutely agree - when I was at BT, at the point I had to start actually refusing to work over my contracted hours I was accused of being unprofessional and uncooperative and they pointed at a line in my contract stating that I was required to work "professional hours" which they apparently parse as "Whatever it takes to get the job done".

I'm a lot happier in this job where I get to work the hours needed to do the work I've got, and even then not at any particular time - I've been running around after friends and family during the nominal work day, and still getting the job done and my social life's never been better.

Men definitely have to start demanding a right to family life - work to live, not live to work.

"Hi, I'm Paul and I'm a Workaholic"
"Hi Paul"
"I haven't worked unsocial hours to the detriment of my family in four months. I still have to work at it one day at a time"

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<fx:>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

I absolutely agree - when I was at BT, at the point I had to start actually refusing to work over my contracted hours I was accused of being unprofessional and uncooperative and they pointed at a line in my contract stating that I was required to work "professional hours" which they apparently parse as "Whatever it takes to get the job done".

I'm a lot happier in this job where I get to work the hours needed to do the work I've got, and even then not at any particular time - I've been running around after friends and family during the nominal work day, and still getting the job done and my social life's never been better.

Men definitely have to start demanding a right to family life - work to live, not live to work.

"Hi, I'm Paul and I'm a Workaholic"
<group> "Hi Paul"
"I haven't worked unsocial hours to the detriment of my family in four months. I still have to work at it one day at a time"
<FX: Applause>

From:

uitlander

Its not just men. Its standard to include the opt-out of the working hours directive in IT employmnt contracts. I always cross it out, and so far no-one has whined. There is also usually a clause saying 'your normal hours of work will be foo however due to the nature of the industry you may be called upon to work in excess of these from time to time'. I have never crossed that out, because I'm not sure of the legality of it. But what is the point of saying 'you have working hours of x' and then saying 'but from our side we don't intend to stick to them'. Perhaps I should add a clause like 'my working hours are normall foo, but from time to time I may feel you have been taking the piss and reduce them as I see fit.'

I have never been given time in lieu of extra hours worked, and have left a number of jobs because of the expectation that I would work excessive hours as this was 'the company ethos and I was not pulling my weight in the team'.

From:

ailbhe

My point was that women with families - specifically with children - routinely *have to* fail to live up to "any additional hours as and when requested by the company", and men with exactly the same families routinely put in the extra unpaid time (because their wives are the ones who get home and cook the kids' dinner, or whatever).

Until men *as well as women* refuse to allow work to do this, it will be a handicap for women seeking employment, especially for women who have children, or even women who are obviously cohabiting or married even if they've decided not to have children.

Rob wouldn't be given TOIL for this if I hadn't insisted on his asking for it after he did an 18 hour day in airconditioned datacentres without breaks or proper meals. That made me very very wary of their overtime policies.

From:

uitlander

But why shoul this just apply to people with families? The issues here are not whether you have a family or not, its whether it is reasonable for an employer to routinely insist on excessive extra working hours. Thats not a dig at you, or anyone who has a family, but there is an assumption I've seen time and time again that people without families for some reason shouldn't mind this imposition, but it unreasonable if you have a family. WRONG.

People are contracted to work X hours a day. So an employer gets X hours, plus anything else I consider reasonable. What I go home to is none of their business. I'm already told I can;t take my hlidays when I woul like to because 'people with families need to use the school holidays' - in the main this is not an issue because going out of season is chaeper and less crowded, but the assumption that my rights to a break are in some way less important than someone who has a family is unreasonable. I'm utterly fed up of it.

From:

ailbhe

Because so far women with families are the only big group with no option but to demand the right to go home when work is over. Everyone else has been sitting in the status quo because it's easier short-term to give in to the employers than to demand the same rights. And there's the weird "work is more important than anything else " attitude.

Employers play into this by claiming that only "necessary" family commitments count, and not, eg, wanting to be able to spend evenings vegging in front of the telly with your family. Rob has had no trouble using time off in lieu for medical appointments - it's only when he wants to use it for *ordinary living* that there's a problem. And ordinary living is what his unpaid overtime eats into.

But I'm all in favour of everyone refusing to routinely work unpaid overtime. I think it's a great idea. (When I was a manager I used to send my team home firmly at the end of the day. It was shocking.)

From:

alicephilippa.livejournal.com

I had one occasion when confronted with the "you'll be expected to work late as required, but we don't pay overtime" situation that I responded (along the lines of "if you don't pay overtime, don't expect me to work late".

They were, to say the least, not impressed. After some umming and ahhing, they agreed to TOIL. Although the implication was there that I was being unprofessional.

There was on incident that caused a storm when I booked traveling time from a site in Scotland to home (Wales) on a Saturday. I was informed that I was not allowed to count it as part of my working week, as I'd had the opportunity to travel back on the Friday night. The obvious fact that it was impossible for me, due to train times, to get home on the Friday was as far as my line manager was concerned irrelevant. Yet this very same manager would only work about 32hrs a week even though he was contracted for 37.5hrs.

Alice.