As many of you already know, a few months ago the ambulance service introduced a new rest break scheme which resulted in many arguments between crews and control staff. The crews, who had been happily giving themselves unofficial breaks at hospital between calls for years, were suddenly forced to have 30 minute unpaid breaks at their base station. Should they miss their break, they either got to go home early or got a £10 payment. Well, you can guess what happened — all the crews did their best to avoid getting their break by taking a drive around town until another call came in or similar. Management started putting more pressure on us control staff to make sure crews didn’t miss their break, and things got generally heated as the crews felt control were trying to cheat them out of their missed break payments out of spite and give them breaks they didn’t want.
But now the rest break system has come round to bite Control on the bum, because we too are being moved to a new system. At the moment, we get one half-hour unpaid meal break per 12 hour shift, plus a 15-20 minute paid VDU break every hour or two, which I think is equivalent to what the crews do at hospital. (A VDU break is something the law says you have to have if, like us, you are staring at computer screens all day long.) Under the new system, we have the unpaid 30 minute break and one 15 minute paid break. We will no longer get VDU breaks but be expected to stay in the room doing work that doesn’t involve a computer. There isn’t much of that so I expect someone is going to have to invent some. It means we are going to end up working solidly for at least four hours at a time without so much as a cup of tea/toilet/fag/chance to wind down. Needless to say, we’re not too happy about it. But I don’t expect any sympathy from the crews!
July 27th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Why is all management, everywhere, insane? Why?
July 28th, 2007 at 12:48 am
because they’re afraid if they don’t make changes every so often someone will realise they aren’t really needed!
July 28th, 2007 at 1:38 am
We used to have two 30 min paid breaks over a 12 hr shift, and no VDU breaks (thats just too fancy). Since you have to remain available everyone would eat at their desk, so 12 hours staring at the screen and not moving. Not so bad, but it does lead to headaches and increasing waistlines.
The new system is one paid and one unpaid (still no VDU breaks), same happened as before but you could claim your £15 spoilt if you were unable to leave for the unpaid break……even though nobody really wants to leave your colleagues down a man.
Now we’re in a new control room, we can’t eat at the shiny new desks. Since it takes time to go upstairs to the kitchen, heat up your Tescoasdabury’s frozen meal and eat it, everyone feels guilty about abandoning their team to struggle on, one man down. Even worse as a dispatcher because you’ve been watching your patch non stop for hours and know every little detail. 30 minutes is plenty long enough to completely lose your place.
Pretty much boils down to not having enough staff to let people take the breaks they need to not go insane.
On an amusing note though, had the Unison rep come up to discuss road crews mealbreak situation and was horrified to see the situation Control was in. Made some new friends that day.
July 28th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Looking out for the mental health of your co-workers is key to the effective functioning of a team.
If someone is affected by stress (and let’s face it, after a month without sensible breaks there should be some candidates there), then they should probably have a five minute break every couple of hours to clear their head and allow them to continue working effectively as opposed to burning out fast and developing a serious long-term mental health problem.
To make sure this person X is okay, someone (person Y) should accompany him/her outside or to the staffroom or wherever. However, at this point, although X is having a break for medical reasons, Y is very definitely working, attending to the health and safety of their colleague. Even if they’re both doing exactly what they used to do on the VDU break, like going to the loo or eating a sandwich or making a cuppa. It just redefines the break activities in a different way.
July 30th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Please feel free to delete this but I have found that if you don’t laugh, you either cry or give up! As an ex-Social Worker, after many years I found I couldn’t laugh anymore and I did give up a career of many years and the job that I used to love……
Management Philosophy
Recently, a large corporation hired several cannibals to increase their diversity.
“You are all part of our team now,” said the Human Resources rep during the welcoming briefing.
“You get all the usual benefits and you can go to the cafeteria for something to eat, but please don’t eat any of the employees.”
The cannibals promised they wouldn’t.
Four weeks later their boss remarked, “You’re all working very hard and I’m satisfied with your work. We have noticed a marked increase in the whole company’s performance. However, one of our secretaries has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to her?”
The cannibals all shook their heads, “No.”
After the boss had left, the leader of the cannibals said to the others,
“Which one of you idiots ate the secretary?”
A hand rose hesitantly.
“You fool!” the leader continued, “For four weeks we’ve been eating managers and no one noticed anything.
But NOOO,…… you had to go and eat someone who actually does something!”
July 30th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
I do feel for you (not sarcastic). I work 12 hour shifts and have NO break at all most days. If I am lucky and double crewed I may eat some food in the passenger seat. I drive an average of 250 miles a day in a car that does 150 mph, yet still I am expected to work without resting for 12 hours (not to mention the 40 minute each way trip to get to and from work).
I wont say what I do, you can all guess very easily.
It is about time public servants were recognised for the work we do every day to make life better for the masses.
I wouldn’t put any money on it though!
July 31st, 2007 at 12:02 am
Well they are get you to do one over on the road crews and they are doing one over you. If every controller started to let the 30 min break rule slip, it will cost them money. is there anyway of everyone doing this and getting away with it.
do you in CAC have targets to meet???
July 31st, 2007 at 12:09 am
Do we have targets? Oh yes. They are displayed on computer screens and projectors all over the room. If we aren’t meeting them, the screens turn red! There are targets for call answering, targets for activation and targets for response. There’s no official target for breaks yet, but it’s only a matter of time. At the moment, one of the bosses comes round with a clipboard at the end of the shift and asks “how many did you lose?” (lose = not put on a break). If we’ve lost a lot, management will want to know why. Every crew that takes the scenic route back to station takes our heads one step closer to the chopping block!
July 31st, 2007 at 3:17 pm
I’m sorry but some of the things you have said seem slightly exaggerated. At present when you are call taking you are put in a group of four people, at any one time one person from this group is out on a 15 min break so in a 12 hour shift you are out of the room for approx FOUR hours (that is a third of a shift). That means because this is happening in every break group that a third to a quarter of the workforce is out on a break at any one time. Management have changed the break system to mean that there are more people available to answer 999 calls. In my opinion this is a good thing.
And as for working fours hours without a break, that is just fantasy. You will always be given breaks. Management will see if there is any work available during your VDU break and if not then allow you to do what you want. They will not be creating new and fanciful jobs to do as they are moving to go paper free meaning that PCs will have to be used.
July 31st, 2007 at 3:40 pm
I take it you’re not a call taker! Four hours of breaks a day - hahaha! That would equal 12 breaks in one day! There’s no breaks in the first or last hour and lunch breaks and changeovers have to be accommodated - you can’t just get up in the middle of a call because it’s your break! In practice it’s about 6-8 breaks per day. 2-3 hours of breaks seems fair, the equivalent of what the road crews get (though their hospital breaks are unofficial) and the equivalent of what someone in a ‘normal’ job gets when you consider that they can pause for a fag/cuppa/loo/internet whenever they want.
We’ll have to see whether we go four hours without a break or not when it’s been implemented. That’s the impression I’ve been given, since we were told we were not going to be allowed to leave the control room for VDU breaks. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out and I hope you’re right on that front!
July 31st, 2007 at 4:22 pm
None of the mangers I’ve spoken to have ever said that you are not going to be allowed out of the room for VDU breaks, Also you’ll find I spend more time in call taking than you do. I’ve been able to look at individual call taking stats and an average call taker between the hours of 7 & 3 whether its a day or night shift is only logged into the phone system for approx 5 & 1/2 to six hours. That shows at the present they are not logged in for approx 3 and a half hours.
July 31st, 2007 at 4:44 pm
An ‘average call taker’ presumably includes The Naughty Corner, who we all know are logged in for about half an hour per shift. They don’t need to be out on a break to be logged out. The rest of us actually do some work.
Also, 7-3 is 8 hours. Being logged in for 5.5-6 hours equals 2-2.5 hours logged out, not 3.5 hours. Even if you add on three more breaks between 3 and 6, it makes an average of 3 hours logged out for the entire shift. And that’s including the people who are logged out for reasons other than being on a break - talking to QA, for example.
Still, I am very cheered by the fact that we will be allowed out of the room for VDU breaks, and so will everyone else when I report back!
July 31st, 2007 at 5:39 pm
I have no idea what you just said but….
Go on mark ‘Stick it to the man’!
July 31st, 2007 at 5:44 pm
What I meant to say was “We work hard enough as it is, leave off our breaks!”
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:40 am
In my control room most people work 12 hour shifts. Within this, we are supposed to get 2 x 30min unpaid breaks and 2 x 15min paid breaks. On the whole, the calltakers do take these breaks during the day shifts, but the dispatchers rarely take all of their breaks - for the reason you mentioned, not wanting to leave their dispatch area for too long and losing track of what’s going on. At night and on weekends, a large number of people don’t really bother taking breaks at all. The smokers amongst us will pop out for a few minutes for a sly fag (not that any of us smoke on trust property anymore!!), but thats about it. Perhaps we should claim overtime for all the missed breaks. The management encourage us to take our breaks, but don’t provide sufficient staff cover to ensure appropriate numbers of staff are in the room. There is no easy fix, but before A4C when we were paid for 12 hours, we were happy to work for 12 hours, break or no break.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:06 am
What happens for those that did not sign up for A4C? Will they still be expected to have these new breaks or will they continue on your current break system? Will be interetsting to see how they manage that!
August 5th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
They stay on the terms from their Whitley contract. One 20 min break and one 30 min break
August 5th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
I know someone who lives right opposite a London ambulance resting space type area. It’s not a depot as much as a place where the ambulances seem to park up waiting for their next call.
Anyway there was a road accident RIGHT OUTSIDE this place and people ran to the (occupied and supposedly (I assume) waiting) ambulance asking for help. No they were not allowed to help because they had not been put on to the job by their central job-authorizing authority..!!
Surely this cannot be true??!!??
August 5th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
uh? sorry I did NOT try and say that 3 times I do apologize… computational error
while I’m still here tho i will say a big hi i love your blog you’ve been on my links for a few weeks now tho i never probably TOLD you about that fact being so terminally disorganized
ho-hum
take it easy
gleds
August 6th, 2007 at 7:29 am
You are describing a standby point. A place where we can park up waiting for a call, although where I work we never use them as we are always busy.
Your friend is mistaken, If the crew were just waiting for a call, they could have helped. Its called a “running call”,. We would inform control of what had occurred and they would have been allowed to deal with the incident.
August 6th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Gledwood: what EC Para said. The ambulance crew would press their unavailable button, quickly radio in to let us know what they are doing (so we don’t try and send them on something else) and then go and deal in the normal way. So yes, your friend is mistaken.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
On the other hand, I have been notified of calls close to where I have been, but having informed our control room, instructed not to attend.
This included a roll-over entrapment with a mother and baby, mum with bilateral femur fractures. But control had already receievd a call, and it was amber, so I wasn’t to attend as they were saving my resource for a red call.
Cheers
Blippie
August 7th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Bloody hell! Were your control room on drugs at the time? We would never do that!
August 13th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Here here to The Insider! Oh Mark - if only you knew who The Insider was!! I feel they know a lot more about what they are talking about than you do!! Sorry but The Insider is spot on in every respect.
And the new idea is simply to add an extra person into each break group - 5 instead of 4. It’s really not that big a deal so people should stop making such a bloody fuss about it.
Take a stress break if you can’t cope for more than 2 hours.
August 13th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Beaker, there’s really no need to be rude! The Insider’s maths certainly isn’t spot on, but I don’t know about the rest of it. Adding an extra person to each group wouldn’t be a big deal, but that isn’t what I was told. I think there’s been a lot of rumour and speculation and no one seems to know what is actually going to happen about the breaks, but at the time of writing I was under the impression that it was DEFINITELY going to be two breaks per day totalling 45 min. Which is worth making a fuss about!
August 13th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Mark,
My maths wouud have been spot on if I had reread my post.
“an average call taker between the hours of 7 & 3 whether its a day or night shift is only logged into the phone system for approx 5 & 1/2 to six hours” This is meant to show over an eight hour period, this was the time the personal performance stats were always taken.
“at the present they are not logged in for approx 3 and a half hours.” This was meant to show the total over the 12 hour shift.
I think you’ll agree now the maths work out. (and who said my C in GCSE maths was wasted)
August 13th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I still only make it 2h 45m to 3h 15m (5.5-6 hours between 7 and 3 and one break per hour between 3 and 6). That’s an average of 3 hours, not 4 like you originally said, and anyway, those three hours include logging out to go and do something else work related and those naughty people (not me of course) who sneak out when it’s not their turn or sit at their desk chatting and pretending to be logged in. Bit unfair to tar us all with the same brush!
I’m going to go in with a stopwatch on my next shift
August 16th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Okay… sorry to sound anal/like a stuck record but I timed my breaks today (on call taking) and I had a total of seven, adding up to just over two hours. Which is what I thought!
I also found the Control Services Bulletin or whatever it’s called from July 24th and it says in black and white exactly what I posted — 1 fifteen minute break, 1 30 minute break, VDU breaks to be spent working. It also said this would start on 27th July which, obviously, hasn’t happened, but I can’t find anything anywhere else on the subject. Insider? Time for another bulletin so we all know what is going on?