40 hours with my main contract, 20-30 hours doing my own thing - watch this space

 

Used to regularly do 90 as senior engineer in a PC factory. Now i'm struggling to hit 37 hours a week. Same money though so i can't complain

 

Hmm. Tricky question.

I invoice for about 42-45 hours/week, on average. At the moment, in the run-up to my contract termination, I'm trying to do as many hours as possible...

However the number of hours/week I actually work probably doesn't exceed more than about 3 or 4, and it's sometimes significantly less than that.

 

55 to 80, depends on volume and time of year. No overtime and often log on at home. Sometimes work on the train as I have a 2 1/2 hour daily commute into London.

Dave

Contarcted hours 35

 

65hrs at work..
36hrs commuting..

 

42ish.

I believe that the French are now restricted to 35hr/week enforced by law. We will be there soon

 

50 ish, give or take the odd long lunch!!!!!
- i think employers are taking the pi55!!!!

BB

 

About 60, and I havent been paid properly for 4 months

 

Hard to say. I work 4 days on 4 off 12hr shifts. So 48hrs but over 8 days. Without using a calculator I reckon thats about 40hrs a week.

 

I also work shifts and it is a pretty nice pattern too. I work 14 x 12 hour shifts in a 6 week block (7 nights and 7 days). Also get the chance of overtime if one of the others blobs as it is a 1 man chmical plant that obviously must be manned.

Therefore I think I average 28 hours a week 52 weeks of the year, no holidays just rota days.

Poor do this year thought, i have got 6 nights, 24hours off then 7 days in the xmas fortnight, so 80 hours a week then.

Kev

 

Work around 72 hrs per week, though NHS pays me for around 60 and are trying to pay me for 48 though I'll still be working 72

 

straight 60 - saturday to thursday

 

I average 36 hours per week including lunch and tea breaks.

I do the odd 12 hour O.T. shift maybe once a month...

 

Oh yeah, I get at least 17 full weeks off a year.

 

Eagle7, join the rest of the queue mate. I won't be leaving for a long time!

 

Well I used to work a lot more than I do now (and I now I get paid more.. there's a lesson here somewhere ). When I first worked in IT doing network management support for a large corporate network, we worked silly hours - 80 or 90 a week - simply because any downtime had to be outside working hours, so you ended up working all weekend etc etc (and we got very nice overtime rates).

As I've got older (now the ripe old age of 31 ) and having settled down a little more with Sal and our Staffie I value my free time considerably more than I did when I was 22 or 23. To be honest, the last thing I want to be doing is working, but I also know that work pays for the house, the Scoob, holidays etc.

I now make an effort to restrict my working week to what I'm paid for - 37.5 hours. If I worked for myself, I guess it would be different, but I don't. I work for a division of France Telecom. It is always true that companies will pay what they can get away with, not the most they can afford - nothing more.

Whilst I do earn fairly decent money, I haven't had a payrise in 2 years (and unlikey to get one next year), I've been threatened with redundancy 3 times in the last 12 months. We've made both our personal and departmental targets for the year and the company still turned round and sacked another 7 from our team. Things like this tend to make you harden your views. I know that some of those sacked were putting in a huge effort (working ridiculous hours) to win business and support existing customers - and for their efforts they got bugger all - just a P45.

There are obviously huge differences between industries and whether you're self employed etc, but all I would say, is look at what you are doing and ask yourself - is it really being appreciated?

Chris

 

Chris, That's bloody good advice. The reason i left my last job was for the very same reason you mention. I was busting my **** working 13 hour shifts 7 days a week for over a year. At the end i was 'fortunate' to be given standard factory wide 1.8% rise. I left and got a job with far less responsibility for more money and far less hours.

I think with most big companies they don't really care how hard you work these days. As soon as the shareholders aren't happy with their returns people get paid off, wage rises are cancelled and hours go up.

 

I genuinly hope that we don't get the full working time regs here. I now that sounds **** because looking at the hours we all work it seems like madness.....

BUT, I do believe that this is one of the reasons this country has some of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, the effort we are prepared to put in and the flexibility of our unions in not striking.

I just hope the unions don't destroy it all.

 

Eh......most of the working time regulations are there to give rights to workers who dont want to work more than 40 hours/per week.
For those that do,including me,no-ones stopping you.

..

 

40 hours I get paid for, about another 15-20 as 'overtime' but at single time, and 6 or 7 that I don't get paid for at all, along with all the luncbreaks I don't take.

Time to move on? Yes, but finding time to look in a depressed IT industry and trying to make something out of an old house is proving difficult.

Fen

 

37.5

Dan

 

Paul,

Sorry confused my message... people should not have the working time regs forced upon them. For example in Germany it is illegal to work longer full stop. It should be a choice thing as it is here at the mo.

The union thing was a more sweeping statement in that the unions generally are grumbling a lot. The point being the UK isn't such a cheap place to woork from, but the time lost through industrial action i.e. very little compensates for this. Therefore we still get good inward investment.

Take away the good behaviour of the unions and all of a sudden the UK is a very poor place to do business when compared to labour rates say in Spain.

Dave

 

39 the rest overtime, about 55 all together.

Jon

 

Longer than what..37.5 hours.

No disrespect Dave,but i doubt that thats the law.For people like lorry drivers,yes,thats health and safety,..but a law that says even if you want to ,you cant work over 37.5 hours.I doubt that
very much.

 

There is no problem,you sign the form,then you work extra hours...........problem solved.

But dont deny people who want to only work 37.5 hours the right to do so.

 

Paul,

I think it is. I think the working time directive goes that far. When I was working for Deutsche Bank a number of the US developers worked in Frankfurt. They said it was a nightmare because security would literally kick them out of the building.

Dave

 

paulr: Look here.
That dispensation could easily be terminated and the working hours limit reduced.

 

Ok.....but i still find it hard to believe that someone could end up being prosecuted for working too much........

 

No, New Labour think it is wrong to allow us to make any decisions of our own and will take away the the right to work longer than the 48 hour maximum as soon as they think they will get away with out a big fuss.

I work 75-85 hours a week with one day in 14 off. All paid for by the hour but i comute about another 10 hours a week to various jobs in my own time. My company has the opt out clause as part of our standards terms and if you want to apply the 48 hour maximum it states in our contracts that you have to give 3 months notice in writing! But weekend over time is treated as optional.

 

LOL i work 30 max