h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

the wife works 13:00 - 19:00 monday to friday and 07:00 - 15:00 every other weekend, so averaging a 38 hour week

I've been looking through a lot of job adds of late, as I'm looking for work, seems an awaful lot are '36 hours per week', though they often don't pause to mention how that's worked out, and/or if that includes a paid lunch/paid breaks... Actually I thought there was some kind of law on paid lunch/break times within the working day

I believe the law has to offer you an unpaid lunch break if you work over a certain amount of hours. You don't have to take it though. Same as breaks away from a computer; they have to be offered, but not taken.

I thought the law stipulated a mandatory break if you worked more than 5½ or 6 hours (not sure which). My employer is pretty strict on adhering to legislation, and our computerised timesheet system won't allow us to NOT show a half-hour lunch break.

I could be completely wrong on that thought though.

Deb

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/WorkingHoursAndTimeOff/DG_10029451

Haven't read through it though.

The law stipulates a break after 6 hours. I know, because I work 6 hours without a break. After 6 hours is everybody having a rest, if you are a office-worker or a manual worker.

I work 12 hour shift 07:30 - 19:30 and 19:30 - 07:30

This works like this D=days N= Night R=Rest

MTWTFSS MTWTFSS MTWTFSS MTWTFSS
DDNNRRR RRDDNNN RRRRDDD NNRRRRR

Then back to the beginning.

However this works out as 43 hours per week, and company hours are 37 hours per week, therefore every 12 weeks we get another 5 shifts off.

So in a 12 week period I work 37 12 hours shifts and have 47 days off. My lunch breaks are paid because I'm not allowed to leave the site.

Simple.

Ahh! The old Donner Rodin Rude Nor shift!

Hi
I raise my hat.

back in my army days we used to work this shift

Day 1 - 13:00 - 21:00
Day 2 - 07:30 - 13:00 + 21:00 - 07:30
Day 3 - sleep
Day 4 - 13:00 - 21:00
Day 5 - 07:30 - 13:00 + 21:00 - 07:30
Day 6 - sleep (up to 14:00, after that the army could get you working or whatever)
Day 7 - off

However we used to jiggle that about somewhat (don't ask me how) so that every 4 weeks you had a weekend off, and every 4 weeks you worked a quick-change shift so your opposite shift had a weekend off. (weekend off would be sleep day Friday followed by Saturday + Sunday off)

We had PT on the days when we started at 13:00 - which started at 7am so it was a pretty long working day if you lived a long way from the camp. And if there was any military training it was done on your day off. (and eventually we managed to persuade the CO that since we always lost a day off a month for this, that all military training was on Saturday so the day workers lost one too)

I'm glad I'm not wokring those shifts now it was totally horrible.