Being made to work an extra 20 minutes unpaid a day

[GettingTiredNow]

I work in the admin base of the local NHS health authority, there are about 100 of us in our offices and nowhere near that number of car parking spaces. We double park which is ok but as more people have joined the organisation recently even that is not enough on some days. The powers that be have rented 10 additional spaces at the railway station down the road about a 10 minute walk away.

These 10 parking spaces have been allocated randomly to staff on a rota, each directorate is doing its own thing so you can end up with either a week there every 6 months or 3 months there as a one off. And I'm 1 of the lucky 10 who have been blessed with a pass

Us lucky 10 have been told that the time it takes us to travel back and forth to the car park needs to come out of our time and not the organisations. If we are late we need to email our boss with an expanation of how the time will be made back up.

I need to take my DC to school in the morning and the afternoon which fits within my working hours but a trip back and forth to the car park means I'm going to be early to school in the morning and late to pick up in the afternoon to ensure I'm at work for my contracted time.

AIBU to expect that as I am effectively helping the organisation out by walking down to the car park this shouldn't come out of my time?

As someone who has a 2.5 hour commute each way and who also has childcare commitments it is hard to feel very sympathetic about this.

Quite astounded that you consider this "working". When I worked for the foundation health trust, the parking was so horrendous that I resorted to the train which increased my commute by an hour each way. More so if clinics overran (which I'm assuming isn't a risk for you) as there was only one train per hour from the community hospital on weekends.

The amusing thing is that if I wasn't there, the clinic couldn't run! Did they pay me for my commute? Did they fuck.

OP, it's 20min. You really need to expand your horizons.

This is why public sector workers have such a bad name.

Ya I

It's difficult to disagree that our paid working day should officially start the minute we leave our home for work. Not sure how to sell that one to employers, but it would make commuters life a lot more pleasant.

we'd all be living in beautiful and remote parts of the country if we were paid for our commute time!

Yes those public sector firemen, police, teachers, paramedicscthey are all have such a bad name thisisstartingtob

HM Treasury rules are that providing parking for staff is novel and contentious spend because in the private sector companies generally don't provide free parking. You are jolly lucky to get free parking at all, most gov't workers have to pay.

I work as an NHS nurse and am lucky enough to park at work but so many of my colleagues have to park else where no provision, even if they finish at 1am, however we have to be at work when our shift starts can you imagine if my colleagues said this and turned up 10 mins late. YABVU. Not all public sector workers are like this.

Oh by the way we do have to pay to park at work as well.

This is a joke I start work at 7.15 am and my (on site, NHS) car park, which I am lucky enough to be given a pass for (due to working unsociable hours) is a 10 minute, 3-storey walk from my ward. I consider myself to be running late if I get to the car park less than 30 minutes before my shift starts.

In my hospital, you wouldn't get a pass at all because you work within 'core hours'. You'd be given a 'Park and Ride' pass instead, which would add at least 20 minutes on to your journey each way.

You've got it good.

Nobody, repeat nobody drives to work where I am because there are zero places, apart from a handful of disabled spaces but even though I have a blue badge the DWP help me organise public transport so I can use it like everyone else with the odd top up taxi or whatever. OP, I do think you are a bit unrealistic here.

You're lucky OP.

I can't drive. I've had various jobs. For one of them I'd have to leave the house at 5.30am and walk for 40 minutes in order to catch a bus at 6.15am in town to get to work for 7am. Thankfully when I finished they day it was possible to get 2 buses home but they didn't start running near my house until 6am so I'd have been late.

Currently walk 5 minutes to bus stop then 15 minute walk from bus stop to work then same in other direction in evening. Lots of my friends and colleagues have far worse commutes and would bite your arm off to be able to park 10 minutes from work and stroll in

You arrive ten minutes late. You leave ten minutes early. Can you not take a shorter lunch break.

However, I have recently had to deal with NHS "therapies" which are 9-5 regardless of the inconvenience to patients. I have logged a formal complaint about the number of times they are not at work to take calls at 9.10am and 4.45pm. A 9-5 service loses its integrity when it isn't actually open 9-5.

Roses entirely agree, huge bugbear of mine. If it's ok to start at 0910, why not then 0915 and so on. I don't want to say get a grip OP but I'm struggling to articulate my feelings.

Let me break out my violin, oh, wait, I don't have a magnifying glass. Boohoo.

Quite aside from the ridiculous notion that you should be paid for the walk to and from your car, have you left absolutely no leeway in your commute time to allow for traffic, diversions, getting yourself sorted once you arrive? If the timings between the school run and your working hours are really that tight then you should really have submitted a flexible working request before now.

AIBU to expect that as I am effectively helping the organisation out by walking down to the car park this shouldn't come out of my time?

In what way is using a parking space paid for by the organisation helping them? Not using a parking space would be helping them.

A free space a short walk away is a great perk; very often people pay for parking near their workplace, or pay for public transport because there simply is no parking.

Use the money you're not paying towards the cost of parking for before and after school clubs perhaps?

I would always arrive for work half an hour early, so this would not affect me one bit. I organise myself around my work, not my work around me.

I understand the fine tuning involved in the school run, I know down to the last minute what time I need to leave for collection and delivery. I think it is perfectly acceptable to raise this with your line manager - not in a complaining about the parking way, but suggesting positive ways of dealing with it. Reduce your lunch break by 20 mins? Reduce your working hours by 20 mins for the duration and take the accumulated time out of your annual leave? Ask the school whether DCs could be dropped off early or picked up late for the duration, could they wait in the school office or something? Maybe your post didn't come across very well, but it can be stressful always being up against the clock.

Gosh this thread has turned into a competition to see who had the longest most difficult commute

Waiting for the five hour commute over mountains dodging bears with no shoes story to come up

Imagine how unreasonable it would be for your manager to say - those people with children who need to start and go ten minutes early to get to your cars can do so and get paid. Those without, you must work the extra 20 minutes and pick up your colleagues slack without any extra pay. Fair? Nope!

This thread title is totally misleading

You are not having to work 20 minutes a day unpaid at all.

Your work has decided that you no longer have the privilege of parking right outside the building which they have every right to do.

However they have given you a free parking space just 10 minutes walk away.

How fucking ungrateful can you get??

Either pay to park closer or walk for 10 minutes and have a free parking space.

Seriously don't try and say that you are being expected to work for an extra 20 minutes a day because that is just complete crap.

I'm amazed that they've gone to the trouble of giving everyone free parking spaces within a 10 min walk of the office.

The earliest I can leave my work officially is 5pm - pick up child by 6pm. Finely balanced commute including 2 tubes and a bus and a 10 minute walk with traffic lights. The day the tube station decided to close the convenient entrance and re-route everyone round another way thereby adding 5-10 mins on to the journey was an extremely irritating one. My employer is actually more flexible about this than the nursery in that my employer doesn't fine me when I'm late. And I of course pay TFL for all this hassle... :)

YABU

I can't even get a parking space at my hospital where I work.

Apparently I live too close. I do live pretty close but there aren't any buses at 6.15am or none at 7.30pm and 2.00am.

So I have to bike sometimes. Poor me.

I don't understand this at all. Your thread title says you are being made to work an extra 20 minutes a day. This is clearly totally untrue.

Your commute is longer due to parking issues. If you don't have ten minutes leeway in your arrangements, how do you cope if there is a traffic accident or you get held up at work/leaving home?

Your employer does not have to provide you with free parking on site.