Hi guys,

I was just wondering, what you all might have to say about this:

I work at a place where I have to stamp in and out with my company badge to count my hours. The stipulated working time per week is 41 hours, or 8.2 hours a day. However, there is also a regulation that if you work for more than 7 hours at a stretch, you are compelled to take at least a 30 minute break. If you don't, 45 minutes are deducted automatically from your account as a sort of a 'mild' punishment for not taking a break. Now all this means that I'm obliged to work 8.2 hours, plus spend 0.5 hours idle time in between, making my day at least 8.7 hours long, implying a 43.5 hour week.

Question is, is this normal? Or should the 30 minute break be included in the 41 hours?

Thanks for your views!

It's a law that you can't work more than 7 hours without a break.
These are goverment regulations in many countries.
I believe it is mandatory to have a 30-45 minutes break depending on your company.
The 41 hours is the work time and that doesn't include breaks.
So even if you don't log out they deduct 30/45 minutes depending in order to maintain the regulation norms.

That's normal and is the case in most companies. Lunch breaks are almost never included in the total daily work hours.

We have two 15 minute-breaks a day included in the worktime but (non-paid) lunch break should be taken as they simply deduct 30 minutes anyway.

So you get to work at 0600 and leave at 1259, and make up the extra 1.2 hours on other days.

dave

you forgot travel time. Now your week surely is 50 hours or more, especially if you miss your tram

Do you have a 10-hour daily working upper limit as well ?
dave

13 hour limit per day... Until last year it was 13 hours per day and 50 hours per week.

Been there, done that ... Now since we moved 1.5 years ago, I drive to work: 16 minutes vs 1 hour and 22 minutes for 19 km. And because the total time I would spend travelling is more than 2.5 hours a day, I can deduct about 0.65 (or 0.70) CHF per km I drive to and from work from my income on my tax return

Working hours were a big issue at our work due to an employee who launched a sucessful court matter. The interpretation was as follows:

*After 5 hours you must have a 30 min uninterrupted break.
*After 9 hours from start time you must have had a total of 60 minutes break, of which one must be a 30 min uninterrupted break.

If you are not paid for your breaks, you must be completely free for your break time (ie not restricted to premises or on-call).

Working week here is strictly 00:00 Monday until 23:59 Sunday. In that week you must:

*Work not more than 5 days in a row.
*If you have a single day off in the week then you must have the complete Sunday free (00:00 - 23:59). Otherwise you must have 2 free days off together.
*Not more than 10 hours start-finish time if working late or night shifts.

What I found ridiculous was the timeclock we had. Overtime or 4/3 working weeks were made complicated by the pre-programming of rest days, holidays, etc. Whatever happened to simply counting the hours worked?

Sometimes I think the regulations are just overkill... I would rather finish 30 min early and go home to spend time with my family!

And especially if no one is willing to keep shops open till later!

To me the crazy thing was the fixed nature of the Mon-Sun week. For example, I used to work 3 day shift then two nights, then two days off. If I did that from Tue-Sat it was not legal because it breached the free sunday rule, but Wed-Sun was legal (Mon-tue free days together). Go figure.

We have the same rules but fortunately we don'thave to punch out so we can simply "cook the books" to include that break we didnt have