Threat of withholding salary, possible breach of contract..

[dogmonkey]

Hi All

 

A very short (few weeks ago) my company suddenly impelemented a new ticketing system for our onsite engineers, this we were informed, was to track metrics, (time), on work carried out per customer in order to obtain a charging baseline. Not for tracking engineers time as they were quite happy with the engineers performance, especially as engineers carrying out unapid overtime of between 10 - 15 hrs per week is not uncommon.....

 

All went well for a few weeks until the company very suddenly and without any consultation, implemented timesheets for the engineers, i.e all time per customer is tracked and all engineers must have a total time entry equal to their working week -10%. Hmmm..

 

The third installment of the story is a sudden global email informing all engineers that any timesheet submitted with less than the total required time of working week -10% may result in monies being withheld for that week.

 

There has been no consultation, no amendments to contracts and as the current contract is at least five years old this cannot apply.

 

Obvious question possibly but is this legal?

[honeybee13]

Hello there, welcome to the forum.

 

I think we may need a bit more detail because most people here don't have experience of the industry you're in. Without giving away personal or company details, are you able to expand on what you've said please?

 

Your time is being monitored to see how long you spend with each client and maybe when travelling, am I right? I lost some of the rest of it with the jargon that your employer must use, but I'm not used to.

 

My best, HB

[honeybee13]

Hello again. Another question please.

 

What does your contract say about this situtation if you can tell us without personalised details?

 

My best, HB

[dogmonkey]

Hi HB

 

Sorry to be a bit obtuse, just being careful.

 

There is nothing in my contract to cover this, the present contract is approx five years old and has not been amended. There has been a rumour that there is a new contract for the last couple of years but, like Billy Bunters Postal Order, it never appears...

[honeybee13]

Hello again. I understand that you don't want to identify yourself.

 

Hopefully some of the guys will be along soon and have some advice for you, but they may have further questions in order to answer you fully.

 

My best, HB

[postggj]

simple answer is no

 

it is not legal

 

if they want to change the terms of your contract of employment a consultation period must happen

 

this is normally 28 days

 

most companies monitor there off site staff now by trackers and dedicate a period of tiime to a specified task and expect staff to carry out a certain amount of calls in a day

 

if they fail to reach this standard then counselling ( sorry performance management) (bullying) is brought into the equation

 

under your contract of employment, you are required to work xyx amount of hours for xzy amount of pay

 

any deviation from this will be contary to section 13 of the employment rights act, unlawful deduction of wages

 

YOU NEED TO GET A COPY OF THE CONTACT OF EMPLoYMENT YOU SIGNED FROM YOUR EMPLOYER

 

IF ALL ELSE FAILS, RAISE AN INFORMAL COMPLAINT, IF NO ACTION, THEN A FORMAL GRIEVANCE