Noremac:
Winseer:
What I was getting at here is that if you have say, 5.6 weeks holiday based around a 5 day week, you’ll end up getting 28 days altogether, which includes the bank holidays. Base entitlement is supposedly 20 days plus the 6 bank holidays.
If you perform the same number of hours - but over FOUR shifts rather than five, then you should in theory get exactly the same number of DAYS holiday (28) rather than 5.6 weeks worth of four day weeks which works out at 22.4 days instead of 28… If you take the six bank holidays off 22.4 you’re only getting 16.4 base leave days per year, which sounds like a con, and below a legally entitled minimum for working a full time set of hours - surely?
Thus, you’re worse off if you see shorter working weeks defined as holiday in terms of “weeks” rather than “odd days”. Gettit?
If you have holiday defined in odd DAYS though - then you only need to spend say, 4 days taking an entire 4 day week of, and if you get 28 days holiday - that’s 7 weeks off per year not 5.6 weeks! See what I did there? Does the firm let you take leave as scattered 28 days when you can batch them together in weeks, or leave them all as odd days - as YOU wish, rather than as the firm decides. It’s YOUR holiday, after all.
I’m thinking that if the holiday part of the T&Cs is based on “weeks” rather than “days” - you’ll probably be better off on agency than taking a full time job on what might look like similar parity pay to agency, but unlike agency - you cannot decide when you feel like working, or not. “Holiday” as a directly employed person - is in days off paid where you actually have to take the day off that you’d normally be working. On agency, you’ll likely just stockpile accrued holiday into a pot @ 12.07% of gross earnings - which means you can take that money as and when you feel like it, and grab enough extra “days off” when reducing from a 5-6 to a 3-4 pattern to make sure you take sufficient statutory leave each reference period as well, without the risk being run of “running out of hours” which you’d run at many firms we’re not discussing here, because they still think drivers want to do 60-84 hour weeks…
This lockdown - gives us ALL the opportunity here to re-address our work/life balance.
Personally, I reckon we should all take a serious look at the flexibility now available around “build yourself a job” rather than put up with the age-old “any five from seven” which you all know I hate with a passion… You could even say I left full time and went agency to dodge that, but it has been a long hard road finding an agency that’ll actually do what it says on the tin, and just let me cherry pick the shifts I want, not take the ones I don’t, and no worries about being bullied into extra hours/jobs that’ll start stressing me out again, because I find things in my private life I cannot do, thanks to stupid O’clock shifts starts, for instance…
I don’t want to ever have to work start times between 22:00 and 04:00 again. I don’t get to decide that as a full timer, but a flexible agency - is a great opportunity to put oneself in a perfect spot, a “bespoke self-defined job” if you will.
Winseer old boy, it just isn’t the way it works I’m afraid. 4 on 4 off folks already get a four day weekend and they will get paid better for holidays than most because of all the hours they do in the 4 days on.
As for bank holidays, it is a bit of a misnomer because if you are only working half of the time, chances are you would be off on a few bank holidays anyway.
A reasonable employer might listen to requests for extra time off, but it will surely be to the detriment of top line earnings throughout the year.
As a matter of fact you spend 46.4 weeks accumulating holiday and 5.6 taking them (based on statutory). If you take 7 weeks off, you only have 45 weeks to accumulate holiday. I don’t buy this idea that 4 on 4 off workers should get more holiday entitlement than everyone else. No way Jose, no chance Lance.
I agree with you that this isn’t the way - it USED to work, the “used to” being the point of interest here.
THIS is the opportunity to change the bad old system into a more bespoke new one, that actually doesn’t encourage the worker to do unsafe, unhealthy, or anti-social things…
Take this “Old System” of holiday based on average over either 12 weeks or any other amount of time…
If you drop the ball from doing 5-6-5-6 every week, every month forever and ever amen - you’ll find your “average of last 12 weeks” holiday - starts to decay the moment you start working less than maxed-out hours!
This is BAD because it encourages you to push the boat out too much when you might be already heavily fatigued from working flat out the past 12 weeks and all… Now you get told if you take any time off - you’ll lose your holiday UNLESS you take it NOW when you might not want to actually take it now…
Forget the Money here. This is about “Quality of Life”. 
“If you don’t ask - you won’t get”.
Push for reforms - whilst you can. This opening - won’t last forever.
I won’t work for outfits that insist on me working “any five from seven”. If that means “No work” - then I stay at home. The now-happening “shortage” has meant that I get to pick and choose shifts that only a couple of years ago - was a dream out of fantasy land:
The Utopian Agency scenario where I ask for shifts x,y,and z - and GET them, week in, week out. No quibble, top dollar, no cancellations, work when I feel like, and at no other times.
Let the old guard “you must do this, you must do that” - fall into dust now. It’s old already, and on the way out, as are those who think they somehow have better job security in adhering to such outmoded principals of “55 hours being the norm” or “agencys have to rip you off to turn their profit”.
The only job security now - is the illusion that your job is safe in a large yard, unionized environment…
So how come full timers are getting 12-15ph at a time like this, “their job not even safe”, when agency are paying double-digits over for the same bloody job at the same yard ffs?
Crappy jobs - are not worth saving, not even worth holding down.
You could even say “Getting sacked from such a job” - does one a favour, as it forces you to join the now-lucrative world of utopian agencyland which you “wouldn’t beforehand have been seen dead at”… Times change. Needs must.
There’s only our own sloth and inertia to overcome. You don’t need anyone’s permission to up-sticks and leave, if the firm won’t let you have something that doesn’t even cost that firm any extra money if they let you have it… We’re not asking for higher hourly rate here - that’s already gotten. We’re asking for “Life-Friendly Shift Patterns”. Is that so much to ask for?
It WOULD be - if you never ask for it.
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