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?

Completely agree Lynda and Ivy, the thread title is misleading. I understand OP's frustration, but she's not being made to work unpaid at all.

Walking to and from a carpark can hardly be construed as overtime. [facepalm]

This ladies and gentlemen is why front line NHS workers don't have much time for admin.

My local hospital charges staff and patients to pay for parking. If you are called in at 3am you have to drive, and pay to park.

No nurse, Dr, phlebotomist etc would think this way.

And if I ruled the world all admin staff would do one week a yer on the wards

Sash that is appalling but not surprising re. the on-call. My hospital tried this. They changed the parking system and started charging staff to park when called in at 3am and staff started refusing to be on-call. They pretty swiftly gave all on-call workers free out-of-hours parking (only when called in as an emergency). Of course this only worked because staff stuck together. The staff side union is strong and there was good support from patients. I think we're pretty good at fighting amongst ourselves.

Sashh not Sash, sorry!

redsky if it's a rota then you do know when you'll be on it and how long you'll be on for. It may be an inconvenience, but when you know it's coming you can plan for it.

Erm...you have allocated, free parking. It's a 10 min walk to work from there.

I know people who have to pay a lot to park within 20 minutes of their work each day.

I don't see your problem. Why would you be paid to walk from your free allocated parking space?

Well, I think YANBU. Your employer effectively changed your working conditions and I don't think you should have to pay for it. It's one thing to join an organisation knowing what the deal is re your commute - at that point you make the appropriate arrangements, or turn down the job. It's quite another thing when your employer changes the conditions for their own convenience. What has your union said?

I'm not a fan of race-to-the-bottom arguments which go along the lines of 'some of us have longer commutes/have to make complicated and expensive arrangements re school runs etc. so everyone should have to'. We should be arguing for employment conditions that work for all parents (and all workers in fact).

"It's quite another thing when your employer changes the conditions for their own convenience."

How is it for the employer's own convenience? The car park at the OPs office doesn't have enough room for everyone. The most convenient thing for the employer to have done would have been to say tough luck, first come first served, nothing we can do.

Instead they've gone to the time, trouble and expense of sourcing and paying for additional parking elsewhere in an attempt to make sure everyone who works there can still drive to work and park for free.

What would your solution be to not enough parking? OP doesn't seem to have another solution to propose either I notice. Whinging is so much easier than coming up with an alternative, better solution isn't it?

Utterly thankless being an employer sometimes.

I think YABU, but I am equally astonished at posters who claim to commute 2.5 hours each way.

People really spend 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, commuting??

Having to park slightly further away is not a change in working conditions. Where in someone's contract would it say that they are entitled to park immediately outside the building at no cost for however long they work for that organisation.

It depends on whether on site parking is part if your contract.

My parents are doctors the hospital they work in has lots of building work going on so spaces are pretty much hard to come by at all they basically park in the University behind - it's about a 10/15 minute walk and they pay for their parking.

You should be grateful of the free parking or you'd actually be loosing out then. You're not know.

Totally agree with flowery. I'm not a fan of that tired old chestnut 'it's not a race to the bottom' which on MN has come to mean 'I don't like anyone pointing out reality.'

For heavens sake, does any regular employee in the whole wide world have an employment contract which includes a clause about having the right to park slap bang outside their office door?

Also, think of all the variables in these kinds of situations... My commute is currently taking me
20 mins longer because of road closures. That's not my employers problem. When my children were younger, their breakfast club opened at 8, so I paid for a childminder on top, to drop them there, precisely because of this type of situation. I would probably have made it to work most days dropping them
At 8, but I knew it was cutting
It fine so I made arrangements to cover myself.

This idea that the moment you have children, the entire world of work should shift on its axis to accommodate your specific wants, just shows how out of touch with reality some people are.

Being made to work an extra 20 minutes unpaid a day

You're not working. You're walking to and from your car. although I don't know where you are, a lot of hospitals have been built in remote areas with limited parking. And with a lot of staff doing shift work, there is non-existent public transport. Even worse for those who have to drop kids off / pick them up. So if you work at a hospital, you need to drive, therefore they need to provide adequate parking spaces.

Christ, seen it all now.

Bet you're a real pleasure to work with. For your colleagues' sakes, I suggest you quit.

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.

Then you need to arrange appropriate childcare to cover the gaps. Millions of working mothers have to do so, and I'm not sure exactly why you think that you think you should be able to dictate your working hours around the time you have to pick up your children.

Get a grownup scooter or a foldup bike. Should cut the commute time down a few minutes.

I work on a very large site. Sometimes the car park nearest my building (a 5 minute walk away at the best of times!) gets shut, and myself and 200 other people then have to find alternative parking, which will at least triple my walk to the building. This is not uncommon, and it's just part and parcel of the job unfortunately.

She's entitled to find it a bit frustrating that childcare doesn't work with the randomly allocated new arrangements!

She would be, yes, but that's not actually what she asked. The question in the OP was:

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

So we have an already stretched NHS which has gone to the trouble of renting prime real estate near the station for its employees and the response of one of them is to ask if they can further pay her to walk from that real estate into work. It is reasonable to worry about child care and commutes. It is deeply unreasonable to expect an employer to pay for your parking; pay you to walk and then, in the case of the NHS, pay for the healthcare you'll probably need because we live in an environment that makes us car-dependent and ipso facto unhealthy.

This is an American site and deals largely with the impact of parking over there but many of the issues are the same. Car parking is never really free - someone somewhere is paying for it. It's a pity that rather than rent extra parking spaces the OP's employer didn't come up with some more imaginative solutions - car pooling, bike racks and showers, information on the benefits of walking, flexible working arrangements to cover active travel. Anything really.

But it isn't surprising the OP is being given a hard time.

PS, I have a 30 minute commute by bike. It's lush and involves no bears that I have spotted yet

Step away folks, nothing to see here. Nobody could be this thick.

I'm not so sure tigger - my DP is an NHS manager and he recently had a request from a member of staff to pay for her taxi into work and home again for a week whilst her car was in the garage.

Does your school run an afterschool club?

Are you serious?!!! I am totally gobsmacked that your employer has gone to the trouble of providing free parking (well free to you but not to the taxpayer ultimately) and all you can do is whinge about a 10 minute walk twice a day. Some of us have to either pay a fortune for parking or use public transport and would jump at the chance of what you have. And no, as the title of your thread reads - you are NOT being made to work an extra 20 minutes a day unpaid. Your childcare issues or pick up times are not your employer's problem. That's your commute now - get real and either suck it up or quit - seems like you could be doing them a favour if you did- you sound extremely unreasonable and entitled. If I was your employer I'd be taking the space off you and giving it to someone who will actually appreciate it

road.cc/content/news/1574-144-mile-commute-it-britains-longest
These guys may have a much longer commute than all of you, but they don't have any parking issues ( perhaps undercarriage issues) but no petrol or diesel bills either.

www.upi.com/Archives/1988/01/07/Snoozing-moose-playful-bears-are-airport-hazards/4712568530000/

Moose loose on commute

Surely the issue is that there has been a change to the conditions at work, and the OP has been negatively affected.

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

THIS ^^ is the problem, there needs to be clarity and staff being treated the same

100 staff? 10 people need to move their cars, either 2 weeks at a time, every 20 weeks?, or one month out of 10, or something but it needs to be fair