Here is the body text of a document I received through the post this weekend. I present it here, and my response to it, for your consideration (emphasis mine):

…the Contractor shall be required to make themselves available to perform the Services as and when required by the Client in an arrangement known as “Standby”. Where the Contractor is required to be on Standby at the instruction of the Client, the Company shall pay the Contractor a fixed fee known as the “Standby Fee” of 1 hour multiplied by the Contractor’s standard hourly rate. For Contractor’s (sic) on a daily rate, this shall be a calculated hourly rate of the daily rate divided by 7.5 hours. The Standby Fee will be based on sessions; one session will be applicable to any period of time outside normal hours of work, ie 09:00 to 17:30, Monday to Friday. At weekends and Bank Holidays, one session will be applicable to each non-working day, ie 00:00 to 23:59. If the Contractor is then required to perform services at the request of the Client, whilst the Contractor is on Standby, the Contractor will be paid for the actual hours worked. For the avoidance of doubt, the Contractor shall be paid both the Standby Fee and for the actual hours worked in these circumstances.

In summary:

“The client has absolute power over your free time, and can demand that you sit by the phone for an entire weekend – all 48 hours – in exchange for two hours’ rates.”

Nice of them to get the word “request” instead of “instruction” in at the end there. Maybe they missed that one in proofreading.


You can probably predict the nature of my response, but I include it here anyway, for completeness:

I was somewhat surprised to have this drop through my door on Saturday morning, particularly as that was how I discovered that there were any plans at all to amend my contract. Having checked with several of the team today, it seems that they were just as surprised as I was to have received their own copy of this document.

Upon actually reading it, of course, my surprise rapidly turned to disgust. I find it hard to believe that Penta would have agreed on my behalf to such an insultingly low weekend standby rate, and yet here is the evidence in front of me in black and white. On top of that this document gives the client absolute power over my free time, and my response to *that* is probably best left unsaid.

*If* I wanted to work the weekends, which I don’t, but if I did, this is the kind of thing I would expect: A standby rate of 0.5x my usual rate for normal office hours, and 1.5x my usual rate for outside of those hours, and for any hours worked, 1.5x my usual rate on top of that. Because if I’m going to be giving up my weekend it had damn well better be worth my while.

And that brings us on to the word “require”. There is no way I’m signing up to anything where I am “required” to work weekends. Even if the wording was “requested” instead, there is no indication of the amount of notice the client is required to give me.

I thought the purpose of an agency was to work on behalf of both the client *and* the contractor? After all, it’s my rates you’re taking a percentage from. With the arrival of this document I have to wonder what it is I’m actually paying you for.

Needless to say, I will not be signing this amendment. I look forward to an explanation as to how things even got this far.

Simon Brown
Vector Solutions Ltd.