Background info:
I work in Dietary at a nursing home. For the past two weeks, several people have been on vacation. We're understaffed right now, so I picked up a lot of hours, worked double shifts, stayed late, didn't get any days off, etc. I worked probably 50 hours for the last week-long pay period and some 42 for the current week-long pay period.

There wasn't much to be done other than that because either other people were unable to come in and work extra, or they were unwilling. I didn't think it was the right thing to do to let my on-duty coworkers work short when I could have helped them. (Two people doing three people's job is very stressful.)

I also didn't mind terribly working so many hours because I knew that anything I worked over forty hours would give me overtime. It's only fair--when someone goes out of their way to help that much, they should be duly compensated.

When I went in to work yesterday, my manager informed me that the administrator told her to take me off the schedule for the rest of the pay period. (Pay periods start on Thursdays and end on Wednesdays.) I was scheduled to work 4 1/2 hours today and 7 1/2 hours tomorrow. The administrator, according to my manager, said she didn't want me getting any overtime. The manager is having someone else work a double today and is making someone else come back from vacation a day early to cover the shift tomorrow.

The questions:

Is this fair? Is it fair to me, to my coworkers, to the residents? It might not be fair to me because I worked so hard, made myself so available, and I won't even get much overtime for it. I'm well rested today, and I will be tomorrow, too, so the residents will certainly receive good care from me. If there was a time when I was over-tired, it was last week when I worked almost every waking moment.

Is it fair to my coworkers, especially the one who is forced to work a double, and the one who has to come back early from vacation? (To my knowlege, my manager has not been able to contact the woman who is on vacation, but she has said she will not let me work then no matter what.)

Is it fair the residents to keep a committed, caring employee out of the building?

What does your employer do when faced with possibly paying overtime?

I am salaried so when I work extra I keep track of the time and then take it off at a later date, usually when I'm not busy. This work quite well for me and my employer.

I've had employers that have called someone else to work so they wouldn't have to pay me overtime. Not a cool thing to do, but it's been done. It does suck though when you're geared up to working and making a few extra bucks and they call in the person who's on vacation to work so you can't have the money. My current employer doesn't worry about me and overtime. Then again, he doesn't write the checks or set the hours anyway. I do that, and I don't care about giving me overtime. :lol:

well i think your employer must just be trying to save money. i dont know why my boss makes the schedule the way he does either. he says he has to follow a strict budget, so i cant work too much, but then he lets other people (who do the same job) get overtime. i just figure they have some good dirt on him so thats why they get all the shifts. i have been getting 40-50 hours the past few weeks though because everyone is hurt or on vacation...

it doesnt really seem fair that your employer would make someone come back form vacation early though. i would be mad if i was them.

I think it is fair for them to not want to pay any overtime. Overtime pay doesn't make sense for a company that isn't using it to avoid penalties for missing a project deadline or something. Of course, if you were in a professional job you would just work the extra hours and not get paid for them and all is well.

I think they probably ought to have planned the schedule better so they didn't have to change it at the last minute.

The only thing that I really find innapropriate though is telling you you weren't working when you got there, they should have called.

You would think that an employer would want to encourage good behavior--always being there when you are scheduled and consistently helping out when others are floozies. They should reward me by allowing me to get overtime, right? Oh, but of course not. Nice guys can't win. That just wouldn't be right!

It doesn't bode well for me recommending anyone else to work there.

I'm too old for OT. I'd just enjoy the time off. :)

That's what they get for poorly scheduling. It's especially uncool to the person on vacation. What if they have plane tickets or are out of state?

Remilard, they let me work yesterday. They told me then that I would not be permitted to work today or tomorrow.

I got a call at 7 am this morning from a coworker who was at work and had severe stomach cramps. I said I would come in and finish her shift. A few minutes later she called back to say the manager caught wind of the plan and told my coworker she had to suck it up and work. *shakes head* If you're not going to let me work, at least let me sleep in.

At least you're not getting what they call "chinese overtime". I don't know the correct term for it, sorry, but it's where they lower your base pay rate whenever you work too many hours.

But, no, I don't think it's a very nice thing for a company to ask you to work overtime and then rearrange your schedule so that you don't get any overtime. I'd be quite upset if they did that to me. But my company is really good at paying me overtime for any hours I work extra, which lately is quite a bit. I'm supposed to be a salaried employee, but I refuse to come in on my time off if they won't pay me, so they do.

Ugh, kpickell, Chinese overtime sounds awful! I already only make about $8/hour, when you add in shift differentials and such. The base pay is $6.50ish, and time-and-a-half is figured off of that. $11/hour is not that much more than $8/hour.

Well, the other side of the story is that managers have their hands tied in terms of how much overtime they can give. Overtime really chews through budgets quickly.

I know overtime chews through budgets quickly--which is why they should have pressed other people for extra help last week, too, instead of asking me to do it all. Then they wouldn't be in this situation of annoying/inconveniencing at least three of their employees.

Fair enough if they don't want to pay overtime, but really, they should work out their overtime policies before the people have worked the hours, not after.

Our bosses are directed by their bosses to send us home if we're anywhere close to reaching overtime.

Honestly, skylark, I'd look for another job if I were you.

And wanting to cut short somebody's vacation is, I think, highly illegal. :no:

Everybody who works a job (and not just those of us in the USA) should know what our employee rights are. I once had a supervisor who was fired while on maternity leave. Somebody told me THAT was illegal, too.

I wouldn't be so flexible with my time if they are going to be so ungrateful. Next time don't volunteer to work extra..let them figure it out. That's a part of the job that managers get paid to do, manage employees time to make sure the work responsiblilties are covered. You're making that piece of their job easy and it leave you with nothing to bargain with.

Say they are all jammed up because a few people called in on the second shift and now they are short staffed. If you wait until they ask you to work it rather than volunteer, you use that as leverage to add that you expect to work the rest of your scheduled week. If they don't agree, let them find someone else to work the hours.

Don't let other folks us you as a ladder to their success. You're making those managers look really good by volunteering and effectively covering their ass from being short staffed. Get something out of it while your at it (i.e getting paid overtime).

Honestly, skylark, I'd look for another job if I were you.

And wanting to cut short somebody's vacation is, I think, highly illegal. :no:

Everybody who works a job (and not just those of us in the USA) should know what our employee rights are. I once had a supervisor who was fired while on maternity leave. Somebody told me THAT was illegal, too.

If an employee on vacation is asked to come in and they agree, there's nothing illegal about it. If they are asked to come in from vacation, refuse, and then they retaliate in some way there may be some legal issues.

About the maternity leave thing..if it's solely because she got pregnant and couldn't work that's discrimination. More than likely they found some other reason to get rid of her while she was out. Maybe something was uncovered that she'd done that was against ethics and that's the reason? Who knows.

In the US, if the employee has less than X amount of employees (I think it's 15) there aren't really many rights for employee's outside of your basic nondiscrimination policy.

My company is nice about overtime. I often work an extra half an hour a day and receive 5 hrs of OT a paycheck.

Some of our clients, though, try to get around it. They either forbid employees to work OT (if the employees do, the employees can be disciplined--though, legally, they still must be paid for the OT they worked) or they switch the employees to salary-exempt when legally they can't be exempt (says the federal government).

To make matters more confusing, you can pay an employee salary non-exempt (meaning that they receive the same amount of pay every paycheck, unless they work OT; if they do they must be paid time and a half for those OT hours). Employees often don't understand that just because they're salary they may not be exempt, so they don't report those extra hours and then they don't get paid the OT they should be receiving (which, of course, employers love).

At least you know where your company is on the matter. If you ever bust your rear working long hours again, you can at least know that you won't have to work the rest of your scheduled shifts that week. It's too bad, though. OT is so nice to see on a check.

I am an hourly worker and the company I work for does not like to pay overtime. If you work over one day, then you either take a long lunch or leave early to avoid going over 40 hours.

it gets even screwier in Hawaii. If someone is employed full-time, the company is required by law to provide medical benefits. Full-time is defined as: 20+ hours/week for four consecutive weeks within one calendar month (already getting confusing, yeah?). What commonly happens, the employer will schedule their worker 39 hours/week for three weeks, and on the fourth week, cut them down to 19 hours. Everyone is familiar with the "short week" policies here, and the State Dept. of Labor condones the practice.

No one wants to hire full time employees, which is why I now have 3 part-time jobs...

Dang, Randy, that's too confusing to be a system worth keeping!

Yes, Amy, I am looking for another job. I keep hoping that the local newspaper, where I have been a correspondant since February, will realize they should hire me on full time. *sigh* It's not that I dislike the people in government meetings and small-time features I cover... it's just not enough. I want to be a full time journalist, not a part time journalist and crazy-hours part time dietary aide. I have been looking at what is available from other papers, but so far no one has wanted me badly enough to hire me full time.

My company hates overtime. Like you, Skylark, I often get "punished" for working too many hours one week by having my hours cut dramatically the next. There have been a few instances where I was scheduled for 32 hours on a particular week, and a few times throughout that week got called in to other stores in the district to help out because I was literally the only person between 4 or 5 stores who would agree to come in.. plus, I'd work a 13 hour shift on a holiday so I'd end up with like 20 hours worth of overtime. Come the next Sunday, I'd look at the schedule and without explanation from my manager, I'd have 15 hours for the next week.

yeah, your employer is trying to save money. it is unfair, unprofessional and perhaps illegal(to an extent). it's a shady move. i work overtime on a weekly basis, sometimes more than others(48-52 hours). and my boss doesn't get on my back about it.

it gets even screwier in Hawaii. If someone is employed full-time, the company is required by law to provide medical benefits. Full-time is defined as: 20+ hours/week for four consecutive weeks within one calendar month (already getting confusing, yeah?). What commonly happens, the employer will schedule their worker 39 hours/week for three weeks, and on the fourth week, cut them down to 19 hours. Everyone is familiar with the "short week" policies here, and the State Dept. of Labor condones the practice.

No one wants to hire full time employees, which is why I now have 3 part-time jobs...
it works the same way where i work, in most cases. but if they see the employee has a great chance of moving up the ladder, they won't hold him down.