Am I Being Unreasonable?

Meridian said:
It should do, but it almost never does, and hasn't since the Unions lost all power. The OP is at least being offered an uplift - many companies would just point to the small print of the contract and demand that they suck it up or resign.

Bearing in mind that there is endless evidence that night shifts shorten your life, a decent rise is the least they could do.
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These hours aren't mandatory, they aren't forcing them on me.

It just saves them a recruitment nightmare. It's a very very niche sector we are in and everything has to be taught to absolutely everyone who comes in. Me and another guy were the ready made solution and they are dicking all over it.

I'll see what they say tomorrow, but the ones doing this don't understand the consequences to their stance yet. Once the fines start hitting because they can't maintain service, they might back down.

They won't even have any one to train any newcomers on the shift pattern also..... their attitude is ridiculous.
 
I do 4 on 4 off and it's great for time off, plus if you take 4 days leave you end up with 12 days holiday.
I work 48 hours over 8 days so works out a 42 hour week.
The downside is you don't get many weekends off at all.
I get 35 days leave a year so end up with 6 x 12 day holidays and 1 x 20 day holiday plus 3 days to fit in.
So as far as the shift system is concerned I can definitely recommend it.
 
Our shift premiums are quite good I will assume that it covers 24hrs equally 7 days a week

we would get 43.75% uplift for the shift element if the total hours stayed the same

there would be some extra to cover bank hols but that's too much to work out :p
 
Arthur Hucksake said:
These hours aren't mandatory, they aren't forcing them on me.

It just saves them a recruitment nightmare. It's a very very niche sector we are in and everything has to be taught to absolutely everyone who comes in. Me and another guy were the ready made solution and they are dicking all over it.
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Sounds like you're holding all the cards then? If you two NOT taking the job would mean recruitment and training, use that in your argument. I'd also speak to the other guy, tell him your worries, show him the relative drop in wages and present a united front.
 
Arthur Hucksake said:
It's 12 hour shifts. So effectively my working week (over the year) is increasing from 37.5 hrs to 40.5 hrs a week give or take.
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Are you able to show your full workings? How long a break do you get during the 12hr shift? What happens with your holiday allowance? I'm assuming you get the same number of hours e.g. 25*7.5 or whatever so in terms of days off the new system should be giving you fewer

Here's my workings but had to make a few assumptions so may not be right:

Currently if you work 37.5hrs a week then ignoring leave entitlement and accounting for bank holidays you will be working 37.5 * 52 - 8*7.5 = 1890 hours.

Going to a 12 hour shift assuming 1 hour break (?) means working about (365-8)/2 * 11 = 1963.5 hours on average (I've worked on a rough assumption that you work half the non bank holiday days in the year but probably fluctuates a bit depending on where pattern falls).
 
chipperhead said:
I do 4 on 4 off and it's great for time off, plus if you take 4 days leave you end up with 12 days holiday.
I work 48 hours over 8 days so works out a 42 hour week.
The downside is you don't get many weekends off at all.
I get 35 days leave a year so end up with 6 x 12 day holidays and 1 x 20 day holiday plus 3 days to fit in.
So as far as the shift system is concerned I can definitely recommend it.
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4x4 is great on days but utter **** on nights. You don't get 6 months off per year. Approx 48 of those days you are recovering from nightshift/sleeping when you get in from your last night, then trying to get back into days mode. Not only does that impact your actual number of days off but it eats into weekends even more than a normal 4x4 on days because those few weekends you do get off when your last shift is a friday night, saturday becomes part sleep part recovery day.

4x4 nights really does suck. Sucks even more with a family. When I started almost 9 years ago my son was not born. I thought it was pretty good. The last 4 years though having been a living hell. I feel I have missed so much, sleeping in bed while he goes and does something fun to leave the house in peace. There's absolutely no way I could recommend it to anyone that wants to have a decent part in their childs upbringing. 4x4 days manageable. Nights, no way.

Praise be to Allah, I have 5 shifts to do and then I'm done with nights. The impact on family time and deterioration of health the last 5 years wouldn't honestly be worth an extra 30% uplift on my whole salary.
 
Meridian said:
It should do, but it almost never does, and hasn't since the Unions lost all power. The OP is at least being offered an uplift - many companies would just point to the small print of the contract and demand that they suck it up or resign.
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you shouldn't need unions if you're in skilled or professional employment... the idea is to make yourself useful and take on other roles to the point where you resigning would cause them serious pain... then you've got plenty of scope to negotiate as an individual

having a mass group negotiate on your behalf is sub optimal for highly skilled people, it works out better for people who are otherwise easily replaceable in order to get paid more than they're really worth to the company
 
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