Paid To Eat: We Used To Be! And We Still Should Be!

When you are a student, thirty minutes is a long time with pay.

When I first started my Sunday job, workers commenced work at 10:30 and finished at 17:00. On our time sheets we were paid for 6.5 hours. Not long after I began, the hours changed. Workers commenced work at 10:00 and finished (as before) at 17:00. Since then, I and many other workers have put 7 hours on our time sheets.

All was well until this morning.

Today was the first day for a new member of staff, and that meant filling in his contract with the number of contracted hours for each week. There, the conflict began.

Duty manager asks me how many hours we are paid for. 7. A definite reply. Not an ounce of doubt in my mind. Duty Manager questions it. A paid lunch? Why are you bothered, I think, you're salary: this doesn't effect how much you get paid. But I keep that to myself. I try my best to explain that workers in the week get two fifteen minute breaks and a paid thirty minute lunch break. Working hours on a Sunday are shorter, due to the Sunday Trading Act, and as a consequence of which we do not get two fifteen minute breaks, but we still get a paid lunch.

(Am I sure it is the lunch that is paid on the other six days of the week, and not the two fifteen minute breaks? Yes: I was told by a former manager (who has since been promoted) that if I worked through one (or both) of my fifteen minute breaks, then I should add the time on to my time sheet to get paid for it.)

Today, the paid lunch vanished.

After a call to 'Head Office' (quite who is at 'Head Office' on a Sunday is beyond me), the Duty Manager kindly asked all staff to alter their hours from 7 to 6.5. To not get paid for that thirty minutes means a lot. Members of staff who have worked there longer than I were complaining that the rate of pay was too low anyway. This is something I disagree with anyway, although, of course, in capitalist Britain I wouldn't begrudge a pay rise. I personally have no quarrel with the current rate of pay. Perhaps this is because I am aware of life prior to 1997. Probably.

It will be interesting to see what materialises in the coming days. I think complaints will be made to the Store Manager, who's weekend it was not to work, hence the Duty Manager being in charge. If they are not, I shall be making them. As long as I have worked there, there has always been a paid lunch on Sundays. If anyone in the world thought (or knew) that to be wrong, it would be the former manager who was there when I started -- who has since been promoted. She was a great manager when it came getting things done and getting them done right. Her effort every day was faultless. One thing I also remember was her notoriety for checking the time sheet at the end of the week. Her primary reason for doing so was to make sure all staff were getting exactly what they deserved and nothing less. If, for instance, she saw worker x on Wednesday work all afternoon without a break, and worker x had only put the usual amount of hours down, she would happily increase it, for the good of the worker.

I am sue the Duty Manager in charge today is wrong. Whomever he spoke to at 'Head Office' is wrong. We do not get a paid lunch by law, but we do by company policy. Such reckless behaviour makes unionism more and more justified.

Where I work, workers rights have always been one step above the law. We do not, for example, get paid the minimum wage; we get paid a little bit more than that. Although the law states that it is only every 8 hours a labourer is entitled to a thirty minute break, I would argue that company policy should be more generous than that. The job I do is more physically demanding than an ordinary office job. Being on your feet all day and often having to help move heavy objects can be very hard. The company should remember this.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright