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URGENT - legal advice needed!
Is anyone here a solicitor, preferably with experience in employment law?
What it is: my employer is Reality Group, or Littlewoods Shop Direct, or - the latest one - Home Delivery Network, or whatever the hell they're calling themselves this week. In the last 6 years, I have worked for White Arrow, Reality Group, Argos Retail Group, Shop Direct, Littlewoods Shop Direct and now Home Delivery Network...and I haven't moved a bloody inch. The Monopolies and Mergers Commission notwithstanding, they now own over 70% of the UK home delivery market - if that isn't a monopoly, I don't know what is. The only reason the Reality/Littlewoods merger was allowed was because Tessa Jowell bottled out when they threatened thousands of redundancies if the merger wasn't approved.
Anyway, for some reason, they want to increase our working hours from 39 to 40. The last three or four pay negotations have been about this, and we've told 'em, via the union, to get stuffed. The fact that it would mean we'd be clocking on 15 minutes sooner for four days a week is neither here nor there. In theory I'm on a 2pm - 10pm shift, but in practice we actually start at 1:45pm. We're paid for 7.75 hours a day, 8 hours on Mondays (4 x 7.75 + 8 = 39), but we're actually in the place for 41.5 hours - our second daily break (30 minutes; first is 15 minutes) is not included in our hours of work and is unpaid. This causes overlap with the 6am - 2pm shift, which in turn causes a number of problems which I won't describe because they aren't relevant here.
If we accept this change, it'd mean we'd be clocking on at the same time every day, 1:30pm. It doesn't sound like much to fuss about, does it? But here's the kicker: we have no guarantee they won't change our shift times if we agree to it. At one point they wanted us - if we accepted the change - to alter our shift from 2 - 10 to 3 - 11. Needless to say, it was thrown out on that basis alone. Some of the lads travel by bus, and some services don't run that late. Others travel a considerable distance by car, and don't want to be driving that late at night.
Up to now, I had thought that any change had to be agreed in writing between employer and employee, and if the employee didn't agree to it, s/he could tell the employer what to do with it. But I've done some research and discovered to my horror that they can force the change on us...provided there's a majority vote in the union in favour of it. Anyone who doesn't accept the change after that will, we've been told by our union rep, be given 90 days' notice and dismissed. There's a provision in the law which allows for collective agreements, i.e. union negotations on the employees' behalf, for changes to contracts of employment...such as working hours. Ironic, given that unions are supposed to protect employees from being screwed, not sell them down the river.
We don't trust them. Believe me, we have no reason to. But it seems now they're going to get their way, and we still have not been told why they want this 40th hour. Some of us object to it on that basis alone. We want to know why. We were once told some guff about it making the pay calculations easier. Oh, please. The payroll is handled by computer, not by some bloody clerk with a pencil and paper. A computer doesn't care if the hours are 39, 40 or 39.32763743785487241254. There must be a reason.
The vote is next week. So I need to know now if there's anything we can do about it...because up to press it seems there isn't. Even if we try to claim unfair dismissal, if the collective agreement is in favour then it seems such claims wouldn't get us anywhere - and then we're out of a job.
Help!
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"A government is a group of people - usually, notably, ungoverned."
- Shepherd Derrial Book, quoting Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Firefly-class transport Serenity
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