Salaried to piece work

[babymaddie]

Hi,
My husband's firm is making all their employed salaried enginneers change to a piece work contract (!!!) which obviously changes everything about the amount and way they are to be paid.

There is an issue that they seem unable to answer us on and I wondered if anyone could offer us some advice on it.

My husband is a satellite/aerial engineer and will get paid for every job he does. There are on occasions jobs that he attends that cannot be completed for either Health and Safety reasons as in they cannot secure their ladders correctly or there is a great huge tree right in the way of the signal or the house has PVC cladding on the outside and they cannot secure their ladders to that sort of exterier etc etc.

At every job they go to they have to do a health and safety risk assessment as part of the job which enables them to decide if the job can be completed - the firm are saying that if they travel to the job which could be 25/30 miles away and get there and the job cannot be completed then they will not get paid - I just don't think that is right that they will be using their own travelling time to attend the job and when they get there they cannot do it through no fault of their own.......surely without an engineer attending the job in the first place, the company wouldn't know if the job could be done or not?
They are still being classed as employed engineers but on piece work - please could come offer some advice. We are being put in a terrible situation financially and it is such a worry.
My husband could travel to 2/3 jobs per week only to have them cancelled also SKY sometimes cancel the job and the engineers still have travelled to the job as they were not told the job had been previously cancelled so again they won't get paid.
Many thanks for your time.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

Is it SKY?

 

[OldWelshGuy]

It will be someone like Firstline or the like.

Has he been made redundant and re-emloyed then?

 

[babymaddie]

Its FLD !!

No not been made redundant - just issued with a new contract under piece work conditions since their buy out from AVC as AVC run their company the same way.

He was a salaried employee with FLD and now piece work still employed though alhtough to be honest it's more like a franchised position now.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

Nasty. I can see the flip side of this one though, having in each of my properties (which were perfectly normal) had 3 sets of contractors arrive (3 different dates, 2 different visits) and say that they can't do the job because of "H&S reasons". Funnily enough, all three properties got a first time instal with no issues when Sky sent one of their own engineers out.

I have learnt simply never to accept any booking for a Friday with a contractor. Somehow, these seem to ahve a higher than average incidence of H&S problems. particularly, those after 3pm.

Absolutley no reflection on the OP's hubby - simply, that if I was the company paying for the instals, then piece work would also be my preferred method also.

 

[babymaddie]

Yes I know what you mean. My Husband had one one job cancelled last month and that was because they client wan't in !1 There are other engineers on the team that was a 70% cancellation rate and they let the team down.

My Husband has been in the field for over 20 years and often gets called back to jobs that other installers haven't been able to do and with the same equipment completes the job which obv costs the firm money as they are resending engineers out but sometimes if the client isn't in then the job cannot be done. Some lads will of course do the job without the health and safety equipment on, just to get the job done which is fine if you dont get caught as it's instant dismissal if you get caught.

My Husband hates putting all the gear on as it add time to each job he does and he can quite easily scale a set of ladders without it all on but he cannot afford to get caught by TM's that patrol around trying to catch them out as they have nothing better to do.
Its a tough situation to be in.

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

They're busy round here nabbing window cleaners that actually dare to climb ladders

H&S rationalisation - is that one on the condems list - the UK could save millions by replacing ALL H&S legislation with one simple edit;

"employees and employers are to use common sense at all times".

 

[babymaddie]

They're not allowed commen sense anymore lol

 

[Astaroth]

At the end of the day the job rate should factor in the fact that 5% or whatever jobs will not be able to be completed - it should also encourage best practice like phoning ahead to make sure customers are in and not refusing on H&S grounds when in reality its because its Friday afternoon and they want to clock off on time.

 

[Aspens Marketing and PR]

Your husband needs to talk to an employment lawyer. Try Legal Hounds, a not for profit service. It sounds like a fundamental change to his contract to me.

 

[Alex C.]

Having worked for Sky (in the engineer support team), this is the way most subbies (AVC) work. I believe the going rate is something like £22 for a service call, and about £40 for an install. Most subbies also have to pay for their fuel & van - from what I've heard of this, FLD are going to provide the van for the engineer, but are they also providing fuel?

The problem is that they obviously can't guarantee work - FLD took on too many salaried engineers as part of the digital switchover work, and unfortunately at the moment, work is quite quiet for sky engineers.

He should be fine over Christmas (there were many subbies doing 14 x 120 minute jobs in a day last year, and earning a fortune, but clearly not doing a proper job since they were only actually spending 30-40 minutes on each job).

As has been said above, best to consult with a solicitor about the actual changes - if he does continue on piece work, make sure that you save enough over november and december to get you through January - it's a very quiet month usually.

Good luck

Edit: a note on cancellations - unfortunately, we used to get a lot of flak from engineers for having to cancel jobs - for instance, if an engineer goes to a customers house, installs the system, goes to connect it up and the phone line turns out to be broken, then the job cannot go ahead - everything has to be removed and the engineer is not paid for the work. Unfortunately, it's cancellations are just part of the job.

 

[babymaddie]

Having worked for Sky (in the engineer support team), this is the way most subbies (AVC) work. I believe the going rate is something like £22 for a service call, and about £40 for an install. Most subbies also have to pay for their fuel & van - from what I've heard of this, FLD are going to provide the van for the engineer, but are they also providing fuel?

The problem is that they obviously can't guarantee work - FLD took on too many salaried engineers as part of the digital switchover work, and unfortunately at the moment, work is quite quiet for sky engineers.

He should be fine over Christmas (there were many subbies doing 14 x 120 minute jobs in a day last year, and earning a fortune, but clearly not doing a proper job since they were only actually spending 30-40 minutes on each job).

As has been said above, best to consult with a solicitor about the actual changes - if he does continue on piece work, make sure that you save enough over november and december to get you through January - it's a very quiet month usually.

Good luck

Edit: a note on cancellations - unfortunately, we used to get a lot of flak from engineers for having to cancel jobs - for instance, if an engineer goes to a customers house, installs the system, goes to connect it up and the phone line turns out to be broken, then the job cannot go ahead - everything has to be removed and the engineer is not paid for the work. Unfortunately, it's cancellations are just part of the job.

Thanks for this. My husband is an employed engineer so keeps the van he has now, stock, fuel etc is all paid for as well as holiday pay averaged out over the weeks. They are to be paid £10 per service call and £20 per install and then it rises for longer minuted jobs.
Apparently they are being guaranteed 8 hours work per day with the cut being 70% of jobs being given to the employed engineers and 30% of the jobs going to be given to the franchised lads.
They are still finalising some details regarding cancellations etc as it's going to cause lots of probs if jobs are cancelled and the lads arent getting paid when it's not their fault.