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No fixed hours contract in retail

Rebecca

Hi everyone, 

Hoping for some advice. I am looking at current employment contracts for a friend. They are in retail and offer hourly contracts. They have had staff for over ten years on 'hourly contracts' who work on average, 50 hours per week. 

In my eyes, I have always worked with salaried contracts, where they are paid a salary for fixed hours that they work. When I see a 'paid by the hour' contract, I automatically believe this is zero hour contract, as they are paid for the hours they work, they have no fixed hours or guaranteed income, although entitled to statutory rights. 

I guess my question is, if an employee has worked for say ten years, averaging a consistent 50 hour week, should they not be entitled to a salaried, permanent contract? My friend advises every staff member is happy with their current contract, but my HR mind is thinking differently. 

Thanks in advance

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  • Hi Rebecca

    It may be very necessary to know the exact wording of these contracts that determines working hours etc
  • in reply to David
    Hi David,

    Thanks for your response,

    The exact wording is... The Companys operational hours are from 9am to 2am Monday - Saturday. Your normal working hours are XX per week. Hours each week to be worked flexibly between the above hours in accordance with the weekly roster.

    Which in my eyes, look like a set amount of hours for a set amount of pay.

    They are pretty adamant the contracts should remain hourly, so I feel I need to recommend to rephrase that whole paragraph to be more along the lines of, 'you are employed on an hourly basis, therefore there are no specified working hours and you will only be paid for the hours you work, according to the rota'.. something like that.

    My concern, is some of these employees have been working 50 hours avg on a consistent basis for years, which I feel warrants a full-time contract. Or I suppose, when they do build up continuous employment they will be entitled to more rights as what a FT employee would be.

    Sorry for the ramble! appreciate your advice.
  • in reply to Rebecca
    Rebecca

    The wording of the contract doesn't look that off to me.

    There are very many hourly paid employees in this world who are on permanent full-time contracts - we have many in our contact centre operations. The contract is for 40 hours per week with working any 5 from 7 days between the hours of 7.00am and 10.00pm subject to rota which is a mix of early, middle and late. Supplements are paid to the hourly rate for evening and weekend working.

    Not every role is salaried but that doesn't mean hourly paid employees do not have a permanent full-time (or part-time) contract.
  • in reply to Rebecca

    Hi Rebecca

    I’d fully agree with your interpretations, except that I can’t understand your reference to building up continuous employment - only if they’d very clearly been totally casual whereby their employment contracts began again and ended every time each and every instance of casual employment came to an end would this conceivably apply. That clearly hasn’t been the case, so they already have continuous employment from the date those contracts began.

    Ultimately it would be for a Tribunal to decide whether or not their ‘normal working hours’ and their obligations to work them constitute a right to be paid for such hours, even if no work were ever available but, in the absence of any contractual short time working clause I’d think like you that it would.

    Furthermore, their normal weekly pay assuming their employment is continuous for most purposes would be based on their normal weekly earnings.

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