My depot is 3 hours away.
I have a set area to cover which is up to 60 miles from my house and i have both hired and customer owned fork trucks to service and repair.
The company i work for has never had a issue before with distances or how long it takes to arrive on site.
It has always been convenient for engineers who live 15 mins away from a customer or Depot in a large town or city to arrive on site then go awol for 15 mins.
I do not have that option and all of the travel time is taken up driving.
I have worked in the fork lift industry for over 20 years and seen many changes that have made our jobs better and worse, the main thing that gets to me now is the fact companys can not operate with out us but we seem to be the easy targets and get paid a poor wage for what we do.

"this has created poor response times and poor morale.But i think we are going to have to put up with it for the near future,"

Herald, poor response times and moral issues that are allowed to filter down to the customer will not be tolerated by the customer and he will move elsewhere.

As for getting paid to travel, if you live 30 minutes from the depot and your normal start time is 08:00hrs, then your "unpaid" start time each morning is 07:30. Why should anybody expect to get paid for traveling to and from work? - Simples,

I worked in London for a while and had to commute each day from Coventry it was a 3 hour journey some days, did i get paid whilst traveling?

depends on how and why the job was screwed up

i wonder if you screw up a job who said that do you still get paid got a job be thankfull

Lets start a revolution(with beer in hand)the French would.
Viva La revolution,
Perhaps i might just go to bed

herald

same here herald.. AC tell them where they can stick the idea of working for nothing this is 2009. times are hard enough

beer in hand also

We are paid like you door to door and always have been,it is actualy stated in my contract.The giving of1/2hr each way has been mentioned before but nothing has come of it.As for overtime due to the'Credit Crunch'we now have to get overtime authorised,but most lads don't want to go cap in hand and be quistioned about where,why and what for so don't bother with overtime anymore,this has created poor response times and poor morale.But i think we are going to have to put up with it for the near future,
cheers (Beer in hand)
herald

I just recognized that your are saying "contacts of employment", and you may mean "contract of employment", is that correct?
Your compensation package is being renegotiated?
I would bet your Government would agree with you, but I am just a service tech too (IANL).
I would want to see this new policy in writing, signed, on the letterhead of the company, if this is being done from the top of the corporation.
This sounds to me like a middle manager trying to improve his numbers at your expense, rather than something that has gone through a major corporation legal and HR departments before being forced on the employee.
If the company is getting paid for your time, then you also must be paid for that same time. I hesitate to call them "your employer" for that time frame, since employee indicates someone being paid.
I am of the firm opinion that theft occurs when someone gets paid for someone else's labor but feels as if they don't have to pay the person doing the work for that same labor/time.
I also bet there are other farther reaching items involved.
Let's look at this as if your time was some solid object, like a block of wood.
The customer pays for a block of wood, and the company receives money for that block of wood, but does not then pay it's supplier for that block of wood.
Is that fair to the wood block supplier? Or is it breach of contract or theft? What is different about the block of wood and the block of time, other than one is tangible?
Of course the other side of the coin is that this may be their method of renegotiating their responsibilities as an employer, and your only recourse may involve finding a new employer. good luck

Hi edward_t.
Thank you for your reply.
Over here in the uk a field service engineer has always been paid from the time he or she leaves their home or as soon as the tracker gets excited.
Then travel time has always been paid by the customer or if hired included in the monthly hire fee.
What has happend in this industry companys have looked at how to save money and a easy way is pay us for 8 hours but making us work a 9.5 hour day which to me is unacceptable.

Over here, on this side of the pond, we rarely get paid to commute to the office, or the equivalent time if we are heading in a direction other than that of the office/shop. There was a thread here not to long ago that brought up this subject, and it was noted that in at least one instance/ the state government had to step in and force the employer to compensate the employees for legitimate travel time. Any time they were charging a customer for, since the customer thinks he is paying for your time,
As far as overtime, this is the norm here, all overtime MUST be approved my the manager and/or the paying customer, and we charge the customer for 1.5x the normal labor rate for overtime calls. further, if they are charging the customer, and you are not at your own "convenience" it seems like they MUST pay you, since they are charging for -your- time.