Imagine working at a job where you barely make enough to pay the bills, but you have the option of working overtime, which adds a huge bump to your paycheck. If the boss decided you would no longer get paid for overtime but still expected you to work overtime, would you do it, refuse, or look for another job?

In this story, employees who work with medical waste at a hospital are in this exact situation. A cost cutting effort by the higher ups means more hours for less pay. Let’s see how they handle the situation.

AITA for refusing to work overtime at a reduced rate of pay?

Context. I work in the NHS. I wont say exactly where other than a major hospital in the South of England. I am not medical staff but work with the waste department.

Buckle in, this is a little complicated…

The story. I’ve been working for the waste department for a few years now. Its never been great pay, and there is a lot of heavy lifting and a hell of a lot of walking.

There is also some considerable risk involving clinical waste, needles and other less pleasant stuff we have to be specially trained to deal with, to both be safe for those using the hospital and our own health and safety.

There’s a lot of walking involved.

Last year I would add on some 10-15 hours of overtime average a week.

You never get fat in this job as you’ll walk a minimum of 5 miles (we’ve measured it with apps in our team and it averages 8-10 a day) across the site.

Its 35 hours a week contract and we all barely scrape by on that. The overtime really helped.

Most of the guys would also donate some 30 mins of their own time simply in helping out with menial tasks that we never got the time for during our shift.

The higher ups decide they need to cut costs.

Annoyingly one of those higher up in the Trust decided we cost too much (yes, their actual words; almost as if it was our fault, despite their salary being about 3x our yearly pay) and looked at ways to cut costs.

Eventually they decided to cut our overtime and use what is called NHSP – an internal NHS based agency.

Those on that additional employment contract do not get any enhancements for weekends or unsocial hours so they typically get up to £20 or £30 less a day than our/my personal normal shift.

Nobody wants to work more and get paid less.

Most of the guys have a chat and I suggest I wont be signing up to NHSP to work the same work for less money.

I have also heard of many admin issues (payment not happening, issues with documentation, education/training records not being kept properly).

Most agree they’ll cut back to normal contracted hours.

The Trust is NOT happy with this.

The higher ups are getting desperate.

Cue lots of begging. Cue a struggle to get staff to sign up on NHSP (as most that do end up leaving within a couple of weeks due to sheer frustration).

Our resolve is strong. We simply will not work the same job for less money.

The top boss has suggested that we’re now “the problem” and maybe we should also be working through our unpaid breaks. Its been suggested to us that they’re now reviewing contracts in light of the department tender being close to review.

So AITA for refusing to work for less?

I hope they don’t back down. They should not work more and get paid less. The higher ups can take a pay cut if they need to cut costs.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person asks a good question.

Another person rants about the NHS.

It doesn’t sound legal.

Another person wishes them luck.

As long as nobody gives in, the bosses might back down.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.