One of our departments has a short and defined busy season, lasting usually from mid-November to Christmas, in which the affected staff end up working about 3 hours’ overtime a week – they’re usually 9-5.30 the rest of the year.

Things have changed recently and the head of the department plus 3 of the 5 other staff have had babies in the past 18 months so 3 of the 4 are now on reduced hours.

One problem which no-one seems to have foreseen, is that the fewer hours being worked have brought the rush forward 5 weeks. The other issue is that the reduced hours workers are now refusing to do any overtime at all.

This means that the undone work is falling to the two non-parents on staff, who have raised a formal grievance since they say (and their computer logs and timesheets support) that they have worked six hours a week of unpaid overtime since the beginning of October and they can only see it getting worse. The first says he’s simply not prepared to work six or more days a week for five days’ pay when his colleagues get to leave on time every day. The other echoes this statement but also has a condition which falls under the DDA. She says, and occupational health reports seem to support, that she cannot carry on doing this level or higher of overtime til the end of December without having a flare-up and being signed off sick – she was hired for a 37-hour week which 99% of the time she can cope with, not one of 43 or more hours.

Their head of department, they say, has made no response except ‘But I have to get home to my baby’

What can I do? The non-parents are livid with the parents so morale in the department is plummeting, we seem likely to lose customers if we don’t cope with the rush, and if our disabled employee is signed off we will certainly never cope.

Anon