Working Hours and Leave
Understand your rights to working hours, rest breaks and paid leave, and find out what you can do if your employer changes your shifts or working arrangements unfairly.
Are Your Working Hours and Rest Breaks Being Respected?
Your working hours affect more than just your wages. They affect your health, your family life and your ability to maintain a reasonable balance between work and personal responsibilities.
Yet cleaners and other outsourced workers frequently face sudden changes to their shifts, reductions in working hours, excessive workloads and difficulties taking their entitled breaks or annual leave.
You have employment rights, and your employer has a responsibility to respect them.
When Working Arrangements Become Unfair
Some of the most common problems workers experience include:
Reduced working hours: Losing contracted hours while being expected to complete the same amount of work.
Unreasonable workloads: Being given more responsibilities without sufficient time or staffing.
Rest breaks: Being pressured to work through breaks or prevented from taking them.
Annual leave: Facing difficulties requesting or taking paid holidays.
Shift changes: Having working schedules changed with little notice or without proper consideration of contractual rights.
Night work: Working demanding overnight shifts without adequate consideration of health, safety and working conditions.
UK employment law provides protections concerning working time, rest periods and paid annual leave. However, the rights that apply to you can depend on your employment arrangements and individual circumstances.
You Don't Have to Face These Problems Alone
When employers reduce working hours, increase workloads or disregard workers' concerns, challenging these decisions individually can be difficult.
At CAIWU, we support members in understanding their rights, raising workplace concerns and challenging potentially unlawful or unfair working arrangements.
We also help workers organise collectively to demand better working conditions and ensure their voices are heard.
Your time matters. Your health matters. Your rights deserve to be respected.
Join CAIWU and stand alongside workers organising for fair working hours, proper rest and dignity at work.