Advice needed on excessive hours and inadequate rest periods

[woodymat]

I work as a residential school matron in an independent school. My contract of employment is for 45 hours per week but I consistently work far in excess of this. An average working day is 7.30 start until at least 9.30pm, often far longer, with disturbed nights etc I get one period of 24 hours off per week. The rest of the time I am on duty, even at meal times which have to be taken with the children. I have to be available to respond to an incident ideally within 5 mins which really means having to stay onsite, I did opt out of the 48 hour week - but the form comes with the contract and offer of employment etc, and I assumed if not signed the offer would be rescinded. I do get all school holidays off but this is unpaid ( except for the statutory amount of paid annual leave) There other colleagues in the same situation. We have tried to reason and negotiate with our managers to no avail- we are constantly told we have chosen a 'vocation' and point out the long holidays.

Collectively we have asked for a daily 'down time 'period which seems reasonable to us! Quite often I can go from one day to the next with little sleep - and then maybe face the prospect of driving pupils to medical appointments. Are they breaking any laws? The HR dept thinks not as it is calculated over a number of weeks ,but I;m sure even after opting out employers have a duty of care for our welfare, and the high turnover of staff in this position cannot have gone unnoticed. Any advice or thoughts welcome !

[mariefab]

Re: Advice needed on excessive hours and inadequate rest periods

The only part of the Working Time Regulations that can be calculated over a number of weeks is the maximum 48 hour working week which, as you've opted out of it, isn't relevant to what you were discussing with HR.

You are entitled to an 11 hour rest period each day.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1...lation/10/made

This has only been the law in the UK since 1st October 1998. It seems that your HR staff are a little behind in their reading.

[Bill1711]

Re: Advice needed on excessive hours and inadequate rest periods

Took this from CAB Site I would ring ACAS there has been a few cases that comes under EAT

"On-call" workersIf your job requires you to be "on call" these hours count as time at work.Being on call generally means that you have to be at a place decided by youremployer. This might mean you have to be at your workplace, stay within acertain distance of your workplace or stay at home.If your employer says that you have to stay in a certain place when you are oncall, then all the hours you are on call will count as time at work. This is stillthe case even if you're allowed to sleep when you're on call. If you don't haveto stay within a certain place then your time on call doesn't count as workingtime until you actually start work.

Do a internet search for oncall workers . Test cases should come up