I'm a social worker. When I took the job it was with the local authority, 9-5 type hours. There are other teams which do out of hours but not my team. Recently we were transferred to the NHS (a decision I wasn't happy about but had little choice in). We've just been informed that they are making a unilateral decision to change all social workers to a 7 days a week 8am - 8pm on a shift basis.
I'm pissed off. I specifically chose a career and a job role that had set hours. Yes, I do some late nights, early morings but these are my choice.
Issues I have are mainly child care related (still going to need to pay for 5 days childcare but most weeks won't need it all), DH is going to have to start driving to work so he can do drop off and pick up at nursery (he currently communtes by train, driving will take an hour or so more on his journey) and it's going ot seriously infrige on our time together as a family.
I'm also fucked off because it isn't even going to do what the big bosses want it to do which is discharge from hospital quicker, because A) I'm not in fucking hospital discharge team and B) on the occasions I do have a service user in hopsital (about one a month) we are relient on the care agencies to restart care packages, which they only do between 8am and 4pm!
The specifics have not yet been worked out but we have been told that no-one will be on fixed hours.
I'm just annoyed as it means finding a new job, I like where I work, my commute is good.
And even more annoyingly, the new NHS wage rise doesn't even apply to us (despite us also having had a pay freeze the last 6 years) Grrrr. Sorry rant over.