My contract stipulates that my working hours are from 08:00 - 17:00 and that I must work 40 hours a week before overtime accrues. The nature of my job requires that I work overtime. I receive time-and-a-half off for every hour of overtime. My question is: Once I have worked more than the 40 hours in a given week, do I then start calculating my overtime from every hour worked after 17:00 for any day during that week?

My contract does not stipulate that I have to take a lunch break. I work on deadlines and most often do not have the time to take off for lunch and therefore I work without taking time for lunch. Now HR informs me that I have to fill in a 30 minute period for lunch everyday, even though I actually worked during that time. That means I am losing 30 minutes which I worked. Since my contract does not even mention any clauses regarding lunch, I would like to know if the time I worked during lunch counts as time worked or not.