I've been employed for around 8 months. In that tike, I worked around 3.5 months worth of unpaid overtime.. before I took the job, I informed my boss there was rhe condition that I have time to prepare for my phd defense, which he said was fine – plan was to do this in the evenings.
When I arrived, I was immediately working Monday- Sunday. Leaving most days at around 11am and starting st 9am (I'm paid for 36 hours a week). I never had time to prefer for my presentation of course, so I ended up spending 5 days before the day preparing for it. My boss was hesitant to let me do this but in the end he said fine.
I just went to submit my Christmas holidays and he said, well, you don't have any holidays left. I was confused and when pressed, he said, yeah you spent those days preparing for your phd. I was livid when he explained that our contract says 36, which he interprets as minimum. So even if I did work 3.5months worth of unpaid overtime, that counts for nothing- if I take any day off, that counts as leave.
I handed in my resignation.