Originally Posted by
RAT 5
At Sports Direct recently, which is under investigation for employment abuses of contract workers, there was one topic discussed on the radio. It was a common practice for workers to be subjected to a 15mins security check after work, but after their shift had finished, and thus in their own time. It was at the behest of the company. When questioned the chief of the UK Institute of Directors said it was unacceptable to expect workers to carry out company requested duties for no pay. It had to be within duty time or within extended paid hours.
Do contractors get paid for ground duties outside base? Is the travelling time rostered as duty and logged? If so then positioning for out of base flights is no different.
I think a big point was that they were already on NMW, so this time spent unpaid at their employers behest took them below the legal minimum wage.
On the other hand take an airline pilot paid per-flying-hour and they're going to be earning a lot more than NMW per flying hour.
That'll probably still be a fair bit more than NMW when you factor in unpaid duty such as pre-flight brief, turnarounds, debrief, unpaid positioning etc
Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with it at all, but I think there is a big legal difference between the two cases.