On call at Xmas, what are my rights?

[sadengineer]

Hi all, will try and keep this as brief and straight to the point, obviously we're all underpaid, underappreciated and our call out rates are crap, but I will stick to the important bits that my company will actually listen to.

I work as an engineer and as part of this I am on a call out rota.

1) Due to my company being unable to retain staff, there are now only 2 of us who are actually on the call out rota (myself included). Obviously the people higher up are going to be expecting us to do half of the Christmas shutdown (about 5 days each). Sentence in my contract says "Your call out follows a one week in four basis". So basically 25% of the year. There's nothing in my contract regarding who works Christmas and it's always over the years just been a "split it fairly amongst the four engineers" kinda thing. Would I be within my right to argue that as my contract says 1 week in 4 aka 25%, that I will be volunteering for 25% of the Christmas shutdown and no more?

2) For any days we are on call on a bank holiday, we get an extra days holiday in lieu. For the days 27/28/29th of December, we are required to use our own holiday allowance as the company is shut down. If we happen to be on call on these days, currently we do not get those days holiday back. In my opinion, these three shutdown days are no different to working a bank holiday. They are days that we are made to take as the business is closed, and I believe if I am on call for any of those three days, I should be entitled to a day's holiday in lieu. Again there is nothing in my contract regarding call outs over the Christmas period so I can only go off the part where it says "You may be required to work any statutory or public holidays, in which case you will receive a day off in lieu".

I have a few more questions but typically, I am off on a call out so they will have to wait

Appreciate any responses to this, got a lot of issues with my employer at the moment and will be leaving in a few months, but until then just trying to put a bit of a case togsther ready for what's inevitably going to cause a headache for them.

[ULA]

1. You could try to argue this term in the contract, however I assume there are other clauses about working additional hours to meet the needs of the business. In which case they could argue that asking you to work more time on call out covers this. Additional if you are asked to cover more than 25%, it may be covered under what is termed “a reasonable management request”. I have known refusal to carry out a management request being used to instigate disciplinary action.
2. Statutory holidays are clearly referring to the bank holidays. The dates of 27-29 Dec are not bank holidays, so are not covered for in terms of receiving a day off in lieu if you are on call, in respect of your contract. It also seems from what you have said this is what has happened in previous years. I presume that if you do get called out you will be paid in accordance with any call out arrangements which are usually in addition to normal pay.