I’m honestly not surprised by this. In a couple of the last companies I worked at, it was expected that if workload was high (which it always was) you would work over your lunch and even after work. All unpaid.
It was never official or actually spoken about obviously, but it was very clearly expected.
And that was an office job. I can only imagine what it’s like in smaller establishments.
help_panic_123 on
this tracks. i work in an office building as admin staff and thankfully am in a department with a manager who’s very chill, but one of the other departments has a manager who refuses all time off requests and low-key threatens to fire people if they demand their legal rights be met. one of the managers works unpaid overtime on the weekends pretty much every single week and STILL hasn’t managed to have a day off in over a year.
AuroraHalsey on
It would be nice if they would link the actual research.
It’s gotta be way, way higher than that I work in construction an industry that employs about 2.15 million people and I’ve never had holiday pay in my entire career.
The majority of people are on the CIS scheme which means you’re self employed but without any of the benefits of being self employed.
No holiday pay, sick pay, pension contributions or any other employment rights.
themcsame on
Makes sense, especially with many offering to pay out holidays. This is especially true of agencies because if you landed a good gig and got offered plenty of overtime, you could abuse the way agencies pay holidays (usually something along the lines of average pay over so many weeks) to get the most value out of your holidays.
I think I may well have contributed to this on a technicality a few times too… We’ve got this whole rota thing going on, we get a PTO allowance over the rota, but we’re paid it out over the year regardless of whether we use them (they’re basically just a means of saying we’re not available on those rest days under any circumstances unless otherwise agreed)
So there’s definitely been a year or two where I’ve used none of them, but it’s not as if I’ve missed out on having those days off anyway. In fact, it works out in such a way that I could rake in hundreds of hours of overtime over the year and still come out with more weekdays off than I would on a normal 9-5 with holidays. I suppose in those years, I’ve technically not had any PTO in the usual sense (we’re paid when we’re off work anyway, but it’s basically for hours we’ve already worked/will work), but I’ve not actually lost anything either.
Many others might be in similar situations where they don’t really loose anything and/or don’t need to days off and opt to take it in pay for some extra money. Thus leading to some more extreme examples where some don’t take any PTO, but they’re also no necessarily any worse off for it either.
limaconnect77 on
Try working in education – this sort of shite has been going on for decades. Everyone else is striking and quite successfully sealing deals for adequate pay and whatnot. Meanwhile, educators are being fucked, constantly/consistently by the general electorate that keeps voting Tory, the Tories themselves and the teaching unions.
Just imagine that your actual boss (the parents/guardians) are instructing your employer (in the contract) to actively fuck you over.
Beer-Milkshakes on
Wage theft is the most prolific crime in the UK. Has been for only ever.
7 Comments
I’m honestly not surprised by this. In a couple of the last companies I worked at, it was expected that if workload was high (which it always was) you would work over your lunch and even after work. All unpaid.
It was never official or actually spoken about obviously, but it was very clearly expected.
And that was an office job. I can only imagine what it’s like in smaller establishments.
this tracks. i work in an office building as admin staff and thankfully am in a department with a manager who’s very chill, but one of the other departments has a manager who refuses all time off requests and low-key threatens to fire people if they demand their legal rights be met. one of the managers works unpaid overtime on the weekends pretty much every single week and STILL hasn’t managed to have a day off in over a year.
It would be nice if they would link the actual research.
This is the TUC analysis:
https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/workers-cheated-out-ps2bn-holiday-pay-last-year-under-tories
And this is the ONS data that the TUC is analysing:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/methodologies/labourforcesurveyperformanceandqualitymonitoringreportoctobertodecember2023
It’s gotta be way, way higher than that I work in construction an industry that employs about 2.15 million people and I’ve never had holiday pay in my entire career.
The majority of people are on the CIS scheme which means you’re self employed but without any of the benefits of being self employed.
No holiday pay, sick pay, pension contributions or any other employment rights.
Makes sense, especially with many offering to pay out holidays. This is especially true of agencies because if you landed a good gig and got offered plenty of overtime, you could abuse the way agencies pay holidays (usually something along the lines of average pay over so many weeks) to get the most value out of your holidays.
I think I may well have contributed to this on a technicality a few times too… We’ve got this whole rota thing going on, we get a PTO allowance over the rota, but we’re paid it out over the year regardless of whether we use them (they’re basically just a means of saying we’re not available on those rest days under any circumstances unless otherwise agreed)
So there’s definitely been a year or two where I’ve used none of them, but it’s not as if I’ve missed out on having those days off anyway. In fact, it works out in such a way that I could rake in hundreds of hours of overtime over the year and still come out with more weekdays off than I would on a normal 9-5 with holidays. I suppose in those years, I’ve technically not had any PTO in the usual sense (we’re paid when we’re off work anyway, but it’s basically for hours we’ve already worked/will work), but I’ve not actually lost anything either.
Many others might be in similar situations where they don’t really loose anything and/or don’t need to days off and opt to take it in pay for some extra money. Thus leading to some more extreme examples where some don’t take any PTO, but they’re also no necessarily any worse off for it either.
Try working in education – this sort of shite has been going on for decades. Everyone else is striking and quite successfully sealing deals for adequate pay and whatnot. Meanwhile, educators are being fucked, constantly/consistently by the general electorate that keeps voting Tory, the Tories themselves and the teaching unions.
Just imagine that your actual boss (the parents/guardians) are instructing your employer (in the contract) to actively fuck you over.
Wage theft is the most prolific crime in the UK. Has been for only ever.