{"id":1286,"date":"2011-02-18T13:24:29","date_gmt":"2011-02-18T12:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/t-machine.org\/?p=1286"},"modified":"2011-02-18T13:24:29","modified_gmt":"2011-02-18T12:24:29","slug":"can-my-employer-game-studio-make-me-work-weekends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/2011\/02\/18\/can-my-employer-game-studio-make-me-work-weekends\/","title":{"rendered":"Can my employer (game studio) make me work weekends?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the UK, it&#8217;s probably illegal to make you work on a Sunday:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.direct.gov.uk\/en\/Employment\/Employees\/WorkingHoursAndTimeOff\/DG_10028516\">If [your employment contract] doesn&#8217;t [specifically say &#8220;you must work on Sundays&#8221;], then the only way of making you work on that day is by a change to your contract. This is something that must normally be agreed by both you and your employer, otherwise making you work on Sundays would amount to a breach of contract.<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And even if your contract is paying you extra to work on Sundays, it&#8217;s still illegal to make you work both the Saturday and the Sunday back-to-back (modulo some very specific exceptions which are almost impossible in the games industry):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.direct.gov.uk\/en\/Employment\/Employees\/WorkingHoursAndTimeOff\/DG_10029451\">you have the right to a break of at least 11 hours between working days.<\/p>\n<p>[and] you have the right to either:<\/p>\n<p>    * an uninterrupted 24 hours clear of work each week<br \/>\n    * an uninterrupted 48 hours clear each fortnight<br \/>\n<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you work for a UK games company, and you&#8217;re working more than 5 days a week (you&#8217;re &#8220;crunching&#8221;), send your manager a link to this page. You don&#8217;t need to threaten to sue them &#8211; they&#8217;re breaking the law already, and they know it, and they know perfectly well they&#8217;re screwed (by themselves).<\/p>\n<p>Just gently point out that you hope your manager will fix it before someone reports it *their* manager &#8211; wouldn&#8217;t they rather look good (&#8220;I noticed this problem before we got sued&#8221;), than be the one to take the blame?<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no excuse for this kind of behaviour. Don&#8217;t let them do it to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the UK, it&#8217;s probably illegal to make you work on a Sunday: If [your employment contract] doesn&#8217;t [specifically say &#8220;you must work on Sundays&#8221;], then the only way of making you work on that day is by a change to your contract. This is something that must normally be agreed by both you and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}