Working Hours?

[PikachuChickenRice]

Having been on many threads where people state you're 'paid to work for X hours' I had a look at my contract and was surprised to see that actually, I am not.

It states:
Your average working hours are 35 per week, plus such additional hours as are required for the proper performance of your duties (including public holidays). The normal working hours are 9am − 5pm, Monday to Friday.

So... does this mean that I am actually NOT paid to work 35 hours. But an indeterminate number? So when I say 'I do X Y Z hours unpaid'... it's actually not true as additional hours are included.

Interested to know whether this is standard wording.

Mine specifically states my hours

My contract says similar - along the lines of "I may be required to work additional hours as business needs dicatates". I think it's quite usual for professional jobs where you are expected to work extra hours during busy time - for example, I'd typically work more hours towards the end of a project to make sure it was completed successfully. The flip side is generally that these sorts of jobs have more flexibility and that in quiet times it's "accepted" that you can work a bit less to compensate for the times you worked more.

Yes, my job is similar, but... this is a standard contract for my firm that covers many different job roles. Some of them are busy constantly!
My boss is great, and I always get the time back off but I'm wondering legally if someone wanted to complain that they were overworked - would they have a leg to stand on?
Also, we opt out of the Working Time Directive.

It's interesting - the contract leaves it all open to interpretation. With the wording especially with public holidays you could argue that working weekends is part of the job. Although it's generally expected that you shouldn't be asked to do so bar exceptional circumstances. Our operational people get paid overtime.

Personally I'm happy to do extra now that I'm learning lots and get decent pay but in a previous role I just got stuck with a lot of useless busywork.

I think my contract is very unique in that it specifically states something along the lines of "there are no contracted hours under the understanding that you will do a reasonable amount of work and complete tasks in a reasonable amount of time".

I'm an event manager and since COVID business has been dead. So I work very few hours because there is very little to do. But my place of work think I'm a tech wiz because the one thing we do have is a lot of zoom events and everyone is terrified of zoom. It takes no time compared to in-person events...

I think your contract simply means on an average week you should work 35 and then put in an additional few hours here and there. I think it would also depend on what your managers attitude towards your working hours is.

What sort of job do you do?

That's interesting!
My manager is great, we get to manage our own time and claim it back when we work lots. But others aren't so lucky. It's a standard contract for many different job roles across a massive organisation.
People generally don't expect replies to things after office hours but for example when working on something new I need a solid block of time to read and research.
t's impossible to do this during office hours where I only have 1 hour blocks of time in between meetings because as soon as I've gotten into the 'zone' it's time to stop and attend another meeting. So three hourly blocks, with meetings in between are useless compared to a solid half day block. I do try to block my calendar but at the current time of the year with lots of meetings/updated etc with year-end deadlines it's not possible. Plus... different timezones need to be accomodated...

If I didn't have an understanding manager who let me claim the time back etc I'd be screwed. But since my contract said so... not sure if there's anything I could so apart from go off with stress and/or change jobs.

It's ok to have a contract like that so long as your pay is high enough that if you were to work ridiculous hours like 80 hrs per week you would still be getting better than minimum wage.

If there would be any danger that you could end up getting less than minimum wage for hours worked then it's an illegal and unenforceable contract.

My contract says something similar, can't remember the exact wording now but along the lines of your normal working hours will be 0700-1400 Sun-Thu (Middle East contract for UK company), however you will be expected to complete work outside of these hours for no additional recompense, including TOIL, as required and you will be allocated a minimum of 1 day off per week.

Because of this we also have to include weekends that fall in between consecutive weeks leave in our leave allocation, so if I take a week off I use 5 days leave, but if I take 2 weeks off I use 12 days leave. We do get a very, very generous leave allowance.

To be fair, the only time I've had to work outside of my usual hours is when travelling back from work trips after 1400, but given that I generally finish for the day at around 1315 and have always had ever Fri & Sat off I really can't complain.