Under the generous arrangement officers working in the Operations and Communications Branch (OCB) are paid for a minimum of six hours overtime when called in on their day off - even if they work fewer hours.Oh no - they were only being paid for the hours that they worked! But wait a minute - police officers are on a starting wage of around £30k for 37 hours a week, so that's roughly £17.50 per hour (accounting for holiday), so that's £105 for 6 hours work. Not bad if you're only called in for 1 hour. Sounds like a stupid policy. Sure, allow a little extra for travel if need be, but to have a minimum of 6 hours? That's definitely stupid.
The local branch of the Police Federation, however, noticed that staff were only being paid for the hours in which they worked and took the force to court.
Never mind the rights and wrongs of it - if the agreement was that they get paid 6 hours for coming in, then fair enough, although you'd hope that the authority wouldn't have to be forced into keeping it's agreements. Still: a very generous and stupid policy.
This is why civil servants should never be allowed to make agreements (or decisions. Or anything, really...)
No comments:
Post a Comment