Quote:
Originally Posted by Stitchawl
Theft is theft. It's up to the individual to acknowledge it or not.
Stitchawl
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One of the companies I worked for in the (distant) past, had clauses in their contract that said things such as this:
"Overwork up to one hour per day will not be paid unless the total overwork time in one week is more than three hours."
"The company may plan meetings after regular working time. A notification will be sent out at least two days beforehand. Attendance is obligatory."
The manager could ask you: "Could you do such and such, before morning?" And he'd do so about 5 minutes before closing time, knowing that it'd probably not take an hour. If a meeting was shorter than one hour, it didn't need to be paid for as it was schedueled as "overwork".
There some times that I was loosing 2-3 hours a week, which adds up to 8-12 hours a month. I'm not even counting the fact that I was often *just* missing public transport (which would not happen if I would be able to leave at the normal closing time), which would add another lost half hour for that day.
To sum it up, working 10 hours hours or so extra a month for no pay, saved that company a fair sum of money. A few hundred euro's at least.
"But it was in your contract when you signed it."
Yes, it was. Extra work is normally occasional, and it always was, up to the point where we got a new manager. He started to exploit that clause, where he tried to just grab up to three extra hours a week per employee, trying to stay *just* under the limit each month, as of which this extra work would be regarded as "structural" by law, and therefore undesirable and against the law.
I'm not one to complain quickly, and if occasional work needs to be done, I'll often be the first one to volunteer. If properly paid, I'll work 10 extra hours in a week, instead of a month, if something needs to be really finished. No problems with that. You pay, I work.
However, overwork with no pay goes on long enough purposefully staying *just* within the limits of the law, I'm starting to view that as theft of my time, even if it's still (barely) legal. The workweek in the Netherlands is 40 hours, and sometimes longer, and it can be (partly) unpaid,
on occasion. An occasion should not occur every week. Certainly not unpaid.
Combine that with the fact one would catch flack and got reprimanded if coming in 5 minutes late, for whatever reason (often with reprimands like "You know, if everyone would do that, the company would lose X amount of money.", or "In this way, you're stealing working time from the department."), then you expect me to go looking for another job, and you can look forward to my letter of resignation.
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(Of course there are also contracts for management functions high up on the ladder, that say things like: "Your salary includes payment for any overwork, which can be up to X amount of hours a week", where X can sometimes be up to 15-20 hours a week. If you sign that, then you shouldn't complain; but in that case, you're probably earning salaries that will make you a millionaire, in time.)