Foo - Company wants us to do more work!

I work 9-10 hours per day mon-fri. The [American] company [my office based in UK] wants us to do on-call duties as follows:

Mon-Thu and Fri-Sun (alternates every few weeks). It is pretty much guaranteed the on-call person will be woken up at least once per night and kept up for at least 1 hour. For this, the company offers just under half-day off in lieu.

They say it's to improve customer service, but my view is that the job market has dried up due to bad state of economy so our company is using this as an advantage to alter our work conditions to suit themselves better as they know that it's unlikely anyone will leave.

My American counterparts dislike this but aren't in a position to do anything about it (they have 'will to work' contracts). I am based in UK and so have different employment laws.

Your comments? Is this happening to you... is this only happening at American companies or pretty much everywhere?

American companies are at the helm, but its other companies as well which are using the impending economic wreck as an excuse to squeeze all employees. I think another person had a similar thing happen where they were put on 24 hour duty without much notification, and they signed up as a 9 to 5 person.

You should push for the outsourcing of that work to somewhere in economic decline...like...the United States

You should push for the outsourcing of that work to somewhere in economic decline...like...the United States

Timmy, your comments never fail to impress :)

I do what i can

Hate to let you in on this but..Being an operation manager the poor economy has led to a flood of job applicants in georgia. So we can pick and choose who we interview. I still am a firm believer in if you want to work you can find a job. Maybe not a cushee desk job but a job,and if your complaint is I can't afford that job then you need to cut your spending!!!