The hippy, what does your contract say? Is your basic week 37.5hrs for instance and does it say OT expected and a minimum amount of hrs? If you need legal advice join the ALAE at
http://www.lae.mcmail.com they have a legal guy who is pretty switched on and can guide you accordingly. There are no hard and fast rules for engineers hrs at the moment as far as I know, although this is likely to change. You could also drop a line to CHIRP
http://www.chirp.dircon.co.uk/ complete confidentiallity, also they have a bit of a thing going at the moment with shift hrs etc.
The following statement appears at the bottom of one anonimous letter about shift patterns
A key point from this extended commentary is the need to balance shift patterns with staff and
workload, as highlighted in Para. 3a. Companies are required to demonstrate this under their JAR
145 Approval.
[This message has been edited by spannersatcx (edited 01 May 2000).]