Mandatory Lunch in UK - Really? My employer has recently said that I MUST take lunch, at 30 minutes minimum. Is there anything I can do to fight this without losing my job? They cite "burnout" as the reason. I smoke (please avoid the hate comments), and I have 10 minute breaks three times a day for a total of 30 minutes unpaid already, does their argument still stand? I've been working as a programmer for six years now, and I've been a hobbyist for well over 10 years. I "work" constantly, I work on home projects as I do professional projects, I spend sometimes 14 hours a day programming for weeks on end. This has been my "natural state" for that entire time. I do not "burnout". Indeed, I've been given pay rises on a frequent basis based on performance. I feel the extra time I would have to give to the company is totally unjust and doesn't take into account the kind of worker I am. The law says they can basically do what they want to me, if they enforced it, I'm effectively working through lunch because I don't want to be in the place the work place is, so it's not "free time" then is it. I'm still at their disposal. Indeed, I'm pretty much forced to stay in the same chair because there's nothing else to do. Is there any action I can take where I assert I don't need a lunch break? AND be able to do that without offending the HR department? EDIT: I'm not looking to get into an argument about "You should just take the break ffs", I want a real suggestion of how I can handle this situation to achieve the result I'm after. EDIT 2: I understand that people with my "work through lunch" ethic are not the norm. If I was really to pursue this, it could in fact damage the other members of my team by highlighting that they could also skip lunch, which for them could be very detrimental if they were to choose to do so. For the purposes of this question only, I'm going to take the selfish route and insist I want the time back. EDIT 3: I'd like to try and explain why I feel so strongly about this measly 30minutes a day. I'm awake for 16 hours a day and I value every second. I believe I'm a slave and have done for years, work is a means to survive, not a means to feel fulfilled. You're working for other people's causes, which may even directly against your own personal beliefs. My own time is the only place I can be myself, and I feel like I'm having my life taken from me while I sit there and watch it happen. I know this won't chime with a lot of you, but this is what I believe. Every second they "expect" from me feels like they've taken a part of my soul, not to mention if they say "Oh, and we're not going to compensate you for this portion of your time, either" it's going to really make me want to fight it. I'm sure in ten or more years time when I've got the wisdom to start my own business I'll see this massively differently, but right now, I want to give the time I signed up for, 37.5 hours a week. No more!
Long story short, your employer can tell you when and how to take breaks, as long as they meet very simple conditions that don't help you. From the government's information website, Workers have the right to one uninterrupted 20 minute rest break during their working day, if they work more than 6 hours a day. This could be a tea or lunch break. The break doesn’t have to be paid - it depends on their employment contract. Employers can say when employees take rest breaks during work time as long as: the break is taken in one go somewhere in the middle of the day (not at the beginning or end) workers are allowed to spend it away from their desk or workstation (ie away from where they actually work) It doesn’t count as a rest break if an employer says an employee should go back to work before their break is finished. Unless a worker’s employment contract says so, they don’t have the right to: take smoking breaks get paid for rest breaks
could this mean my employer owns the idea and anything I develop --since I would use the same technology for my idea that I do at work? No, unless by &quot;technology&quot; you mean the employer's materials or resources (see condition 3 of the clause). Your remark that &quot;this is completely and utterly unrelated to [employer's] business model&quot; survives items 1 and 2. Likewise, working on your idea outside hours survives the corresponding part of item 3. Would this also mean that any open-source software I develop outside of work automatically belongs to my employer? No, unless the software you develop is &quot;based on [your] knowledge [etc.] of (COMPANY)&quot;.
How should I proceed? I am asking law friends to recommend some employment lawyers, but other than this, can I do anything else? You definitely don't need an employment lawyer for this. From a legal standpoint, the matter is very simple: If you grant their request (whether by signing or otherwise expressing your acceptance), you would be waiving any remedies currently available to you for their breach of contract. The company's attempt to override its contract with you is quite naive, but the company can always (and evidently does) try to get away with its liability nonetheless. I would not be surprised if the company subsequently tries harder to intimidate you, but that does not change your legal position &amp; merits unless you sign the waiver the company is pursuing. Asking for your post-termination availability reinforces the notion of company's poor planning and subpar management.
Overtime pay in Ontario is required by the Employment Standards Act (ESA). Most employees are entitled to &quot;time and a half&quot; if they work more than 44 hours in a single week. According to this Ontario Government web page For most employees, whether they work full-time, part-time, are students, temporary help agency assignment employees, or casual workers, overtime begins after they have worked 44 hours in a work week. Their hours after 44 must be paid at the overtime pay rate. Managers and supervisors do not qualify for overtime if the work they do is managerial or supervisory. Even if they perform other kinds of tasks that are not managerial or supervisory, they are not entitled to get overtime pay if these tasks are performed only on an irregular or exceptional basis. ... A fixed salary compensates an employee for all non-overtime hours up to and including 44 hours a week. After 44 hours, the employee is entitled to overtime pay. ... An employer and an employee cannot agree that the employee will give up their right to overtime pay under the ESA. Agreements such as these are not allowed and would be deemed void. However, an employee can make an agreement to take paid time off in lieu of overtime pay or to average hours of work for overtime pay purposes. An employer cannot lower an employee’s regular wage to avoid paying time and a half after 44 hours (or another overtime threshold that applies) in a work week. For example, if Josée’s regular pay is $17.00 an hour, her employer cannot drop her regular rate in a week when overtime was worked to $15.00 an hour and then pay her $22.50 (1½ × $15.00) for overtime hours worked instead of $25.50 (1 ½ × $17.00). There are various industries that are subject to special rules that modify the usual rules for overtime. There are particular kinds of jobs that are exempt from the ESA. These are listed on this page. Conclusion The situation described in the question sounds like a violation of the ESA. But it might come under an Averaging Agreement, which is permitted. Under such an agreement weeks with longer hours are averaged with weeks that have shorter hours. There are rules governing such agreements. Note that the hours listed in the question amount to 35 hours per week. An additional nine hours could be worked in any given week before getting to the 44 hours of work which usually triggers overtime pay. The linked pages include official contact information for ESA information and enforcement.
tl;dr: If you are not satisfied with the service provided by the restaurant, you should take your business elsewhere and write negative, but honest reviews of the establishment. That will over time solve the problem as well without legal intervention. To answer your question if the restaurant can refuse service if you don't tip is actually a much more difficult question than it might sound. I can't find any case law on this subject, such practice is however perhaps more widespread than commonly expected and my interpretation of the law is that they in most cases actually can, at least if they demand payment up front as take-away services often do. It is for example a 'well known fact' that if you don't tip the waiters at the Oktoberfest, they will usually ignore you and don't take any further orders. It is a dirty and unfair way to conduct business, but not necessarily a violation of law. Even if a tip indeed is legally defined as a voluntary donation by the customer, there is in German law also the concept of 'freedom of contract'. Contrary to popular belief, restaurants and other businesses in Germany are not obligated to serve or accept a customer as long as they don't violate other laws, e.g. anti-discrimantory laws and they don't even need any particular reason for doing so. If you want to enter a club or fancy establishment and the bouncer doesn't like your face, he will make use of this right, refuse you entry and be fully within his legal rights to do so. When you order food for take-away, your order must first be interpreted as a contract offer and the restaurant can, albeit with some restrictions, in most cases freely decide to accept your offer and enter a contract which binds them to deliver food, or they can simply refuse your offer and return any payment you may have done in advance.
(IANAL, of course) My employer tells me that EVERY professional activity belongs to the company and for EVERY activity I mentioned before I need to get written permission, That's true for software (and inventions) that may be relevant for them, but not for other professional activities. which could be withdrawn at any moment. No, not in that very general sense. they can give the permission to publish possibly relevant pieces of code on SX, and they can withdraw that permission for the future. But they cannot take it back for the past. Once they tell you they don't want your invention, there's no way back from that decision (and there are legal deadlines for claiming relevance). Even if they require written permission for you to take a side job, they must give it unless they can show a valid reason against you taking the side job in question. And that would be a per-side-job decision. And it doesn't matter if I do it on my free time on my computer at home or not. That is indeed the case for copyright of software and for inventions. clause is to protect your employer from you helping anyone who is their competitor/you being their competitor while the employment lasts. This is pretty standard and, I believe, not only legal but would be the case also if they had not spelled out this to you. The lines between what is and what is not competition are sometimes a bit complicated* So, if your employer specializes in subway station surveillance systems and you work on face recognition and then help out your local pigeon breeder's association by implementing automatic door opening by camera + automated face recognition of the [unwinged] members that's close enough to touching the interests of your employer that I'd consider it off-limits unless you had talked to your employer and they are happy with this project (after all, they could be preparing similar products unknown to you). OTOH, overhauling the crappy Excel macros for the regional annual breeder's competition would be fine. And in general, the lower your position there and the further from the actual focus of the company, the more normal it is to have another job (think janitors, canteen staff of a software company as opposed to a janitor in a hire-a-janitor-service company) The general duty not be in competition with your employer also in general prevents you from being involved in a competitor business to the extent that you have noticable influence over that competitor. So the second part of clause 1 shouldn't be too surprising, neither. (update) OTOH, what may make this particular clause invalid is the requirement also for publicly traded shares that they cannot come with voting rights. I somehow suspect that thus prohibiting you from "normal person small scale ownership" of publicly traded stocks (not all of them even have non-voting shares) is undue and invalid (too broad a restriction). However, if that clause is invalid the legal default of "no competition to employer" still applies. Here's a (German language) web site of a lawyer that discusses these questions See also here https://www.hensche.de/Rechtsanwalt_Arbeitsrecht_Handbuch_Wettbewerbsverbot.html Unlike the 1st clause, this is AFAIK not a spelled out default of German employment law, but it may be a spelled out version of a Tarifvertrag (unionized group contract). In any case it is probably legal to have this clause in the contract. The point is that the employer can only forbid the side job if it is against their reasonable interests, a general "no side jobs whatsoever" would be invalid. Side note: they may even be of the opinion that employment law forces them to have some such clause: the employer has a legal responsibility to ensure that you are not working more than the number of hours allowed by law. I've had such a permission that stated the constraint that the permission is valid only as long as I ensure that I stay within those legal limits and my working ability for employer is not compromised. https://www.hensche.de/Rechtsanwalt_Arbeitsrecht_Handbuch_Nebentaetigkeit.html https://www.fachanwalt.de/ratgeber/nebentaetigkeit-als-arbeitnehmer-anmelden-zustimmung-und-muster-antrag https://www.haufe.de/personal/arbeitsrecht/top-thema-nebenbeschaeftigung/nebentaetigkeit-und-arbeitsrecht-was-erlaubt-ist_76_418602.html Copyright law for employees in Germany is somewhat difficult. the one exception is copyright of software where §69b UrhG transfers the transferrable rights automatically to the employer. Whether the software is written out of office and outside working hours is irrelevant, as long as it is done in "fulfillment of the employee's role or the employer's orders" (famous court case) so again, if at work you code facial recognition systems and in the evening the pigeon breeders accounting system, the latter is not related to your work. Your open source game is also OK unless you are employed as game developer. Also that not all code is subject to copyright. An obvious explanation on SX explaining a typical pattern would not be a creative work (though the full answer may very well be) in the first place. But for creative works other than software such as plans how to implement features, technical drawings, etc. working hours or not seems to be more important for assigning the rights and the rules seem to be more similar to employee invention law ArbnErfG): if it is outside working hours and possibly relevant for the employer, the employee has to offer it to the employer before trying to sell to someone else. The clause that employer must give permission to publication of content that is possibly relevant for them seems to me to be in line with these general rules. https://www.zeit.de/karriere/beruf/2011-06/arbeitsrecht-urheberrecht https://eventfaq.de/25510-urheberrechte-im-arbeitsverhaeltnis/ http://www.urheberrecht-leipzig.de/urheberrecht-nutzungsrechte-des-arbeitgebers-an-kreativen-leistungen-der-mitarbeiter.html * I've been advised in a situation where I still believe I was not competing, and even had a written permission, that this is the stuff that makes lawyers rich, and both employee and employer poor.... Take home message: even if you believe to legally have the right to publish on SX/contribute to an open source project, think again whether you'd want this to be the source of a conflict with your employer - or whether there isn't a win-win possibility that makes everyone happy instead. What is the most legal way to participate in public activities in such situation? I'd advise to be open about what public activities you'd like follow. Whatever the contract says, your employer can always give your more permissions. In the past, I've found the majority of employers being happy to see me contributing (some had similar clauses to yours and just wanted to know, some was happy about an open source project I brought, some like to be able to say where their employees volounteer, etc.). Although there was one who wasn't (and that did contribute to my decision to leave there). From that experience, I'd personally discuss this early on now: in case the employer turns out to be too intrusive (speak to Betriebsrat or lawyer or your union if you have one to make sure they really overstep their rights) for my liking, for me that would be a reason to cancel the contract which is easier &amp; faster during probation period.
Probably not. The impediment is the claim that you have a genuinely held religious belief. Changing the context a tiny bit, your employer is statutorily required to make an accommodation for the requirements of your religion, therefore they cannot fire you for refusing to work on the Sabbath, unless it would impose an unreasonable burden on them. If they fire you, you complain to the EOC and the EOC sanctions them. The employer's defense would be that you did not request a reasonable religion-based accommodation (you failed to explain that this was about Sabbath). The employer does not scrutinize the validity of your claim (does not demand proof of what your religion requires). In your planned announcement, you are not requesting a statutory accommodation from the government, analogous to requesting an accommodation from an employer, you are offering a defense in the case the government takes action against you for violating the law. There is a statutory exception to the prohibition against employment discrimination based on religion, that (roughly speaking) a church is not required to hire a rabbi instead of a mullah to deliver sermons. There is no statutory exception w.r.t. public accommodations and religious discrimination. Therefore, to implement your plan, you would have to have the law or the EOC's interpretation of it overturned as unconstitutional. To succeed in your argument, you would have to show that the law unconstitutionally restricts your free exercise of your religion. One part would be a demonstration that your religion prohibits... The least likely scenario is that your religion prohibits doing business with a person outside of your religion. I don't of any religion that maintains a requirement of absolute religious segregation, but that is hypothetically a path to argue – that you will burn in hell forever if you do business with a Christian, or a Muslim. I am maximally skeptical that the courts would ever take such a claim seriously. A more likely possibility would involve &quot;compelled speech&quot; as well, where you are forced under the law to express a viewpoint that contradicts your fundamental religious beliefs. You cannot be compelled by law to express a viewpoint. What is less clear is what constitutes expressing a viewpoint, see this. For example, there is a federal law withholding federal funds from schools which discriminate against military recruiters. Some law schools argued in Rumsfield v Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights that allowing military recruiters amounts to forcing the schools to express a viewpoint, but the court held that &quot;the Solomon Amendment regulates conduct, not speech&quot;. The upshot of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is that &quot;The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees&quot;. A proposal to refuse to service Christians plainly does not fall within the penumbra of that ruling. Nor does a refusal to print books containing religious material (which you already created). You have to cater to Christians, but you do not have to create Christian messages. You could draw a line between a simple ISP who you pay to make available your religious website (you create it), versus hiring a company to design the website, which clearly involves &quot;expression&quot;. The issue is simplified if you don't make a claim based on a specific belief system, instead rely on simple &quot;compelled speech&quot; doctrine. General beliefs do not enjoy the same &quot;Free Exercise&quot; protections that religions enjoy. What matters is what you are &quot;expressing&quot;, not what you are doing (like, printing).
Possibly I am Australian so I am not familiar with Albertan labour law but I have done a little research and the underlying common law principles are similar. I will assume that you are covered by Albertan law and not the Canada Labour Code. The next part of the answer is based on A Guide to Rights and Responsibilities in Alberta Workplaces. First, if you lost it they would need to ask you to pay for it, they could not deduct it from your pay without a garnishee order (p. 10). Second, if the device is safety equipment, and it is certainly arguable that it is, then it is the employee's responsibility to use it and the employer's responsibility to keep it in safe working order; this would include replacing it if it were lost (p. 12). The common law position depends on a) the contract and b) if any negligence were involved. Contract What does your current employment contract say about your use of the employer's equipment generally and this item in particular? If it says something then, unless it is an illegal term, that is what happens. If it is silent, then it turns on the particular circumstances. Also, a contract cannot be changed unilaterally, if they are trying to introduce a new term then you have to agree to it; remembering that there may be consequences to taking a stand against your employer, you should say that you do not agree - this removes the risk that the employer could argue that there was tacit agreement. Negligence In order to establish negligence as a Cause of Action under the law of torts, a plaintiff must prove that the defendant: had a duty to the plaintiff, as an employee this is virtually a given; breached that duty by failing to conform to the required standard of conduct (generally the standard of a reasonable person), this would depend on the circumstances of the loss or damage. You have to take reasonable care of the equipment - this is not a subjective standard, you need to do everything that a person in your position can do to protect the equipment from loss or damage; the negligent conduct was, in law, the cause of the harm to the plaintiff. This has to do with the "proximity" of the harm, if for example the device needed a battery change and you took it to a technician who damaged the item in changing the battery then your actions are not proximate to the loss; and the plaintiff was, in fact, harmed or damaged. Well, if it is lost or damaged this is pretty unarguable. So, if you take reasonable care of the device and, notwithstanding, it is lost or damaged then you would not be liable for negligence ... probably. Talk to your union rep; this is exactly the sort of stuff that they are there to sort out.