Wondering about folks like medical staff…EMTs, paramedics, nurses…who are often asked to stay when their actual shift ends…and do exceed 40 hours a week sometimes.
My D is a nurse and even though she’s an employee with benefits, she is paid for exactly the hours she works. Part of the reason why is that they are paid more for working on the evening, yet more for the weekend, and yet more for a holiday so all those hours need to be counted and compensated.
Will this new regulation apply to medical residents who make under the threshold dollar amount? They work 80+ hours per week.
Under the photo caption it says “Teachers and doctors will continue to be exempt” from the new regulations.
@thumper1 My niece’s husband is an ER Physician Assistant. He makes $150 an hour when he works overtime.
As someone who is in hospitals way too often, I want hospitals to have to pay through the nose when medical professionals are being worked overtime. The last thing I want is a nurse who is working for her 16th hour giving me my very powerful meds that can mix with others and cause death.
Regarding medical staff, it seems that they are still studying whether 30 hour shifts for medical residents are riskier for both the patients and residents than 16 hour shifts. Note that this is within the context of 80 hour weeks on average.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/some-new-doctors-are-working-30-hour-shifts-at-hospitals-around-the-us/2015/10/28/ab7e8948-7b83-11e5-beba-927fd8634498_story.html
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/12/07/458049301/is-it-safe-for-medical-residents-to-work-30-hour-shifts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours
Medical resident stipends (even in the first year) appear to generally be above the new threshold amount of $47,476 anyway, according to the numbers in https://www.aamc.org/download/359792/data/2013stipendsurveyreportfinal.pdf . So this rule change will not affect medical residents, even though their work hours raise plenty of questions about the quality of care delivered.
I am salaried and work to project deadlines. Some periods I’ll work nights, weekends & holidays. Other times I’ll just leave the office and take care of my personal business. My boss doesn’t care, so long as I deliver.
Given the choice between overtime pay or being salaried and given flexibility for work hours, which would you prefer?
The answers probably differ considerably between employees like you who have personal discretion about choosing work hours, and employees whose work hours are chosen by others or otherwise out of their control (like the example in #19).
We were discussing this over coffee. H & I think this is going to hurt a lot of people because it’s another incentive for businesses to have a workforce comprised of part-time employees.
Where H works, the labor crew is scheduled for about 37-38 hours per week, not 40, to leave a little room for extra hours without getting into over-time. The labor reports they run flag any over-time hours, and the manager’s goal is to staff the business without anyone going into OT.
The labor crew does not make a lot of money hourly and many are hungry for more hours. For a few key people, management will put them on salary and give them the equivalent of $12 per hour, for around 50 hours per week. It’s preferable to the employee because they make more $ per week without having to seek out a second, part-time job.
Again, the business is not going to let anyone go OT if they can help it.
H thinks the business will eliminate the salaried labor positions and hire more part-time people.
It reminds me of the reaction to the Affordable Health Care Act. We have to give health insurance to full time employees who work over 30 hours per week? Don’t give anyone more than 30 hours per week.
Certificated teachers are and have been exempt.
I had the same thoughts, @Midwest67. You can easily pick up a part-time job in my area these days. Finding a full-time job with benefits is the bigger challenge.
Adjuncts don’t get paid by the hour
My son was scheduled 1pm to 11 pm today. His front desk person didn’t show. He’s working 7am-11 pm. No extra money, no extra time off – and it’s Friday. He’s the weekend manager. The owners of the hotel won’t be paying the no-show person – and they won’t be paying my son any extra for his extra hours. This happens a lot. THAT’s why this is a good rule.
https://communityimpact.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/SLM-2015-05-overtime.pdf shows historical “salary thresholds”, although it was made when the new level was a proposed $50,440 instead of the actual $47,476.
Note that it was $13,000 from 1975 to 2004. The CPI calculator at http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl indicates that $13,000 was equivalent in 2016 dollars to $57,814 in 1975, but $16,466 in 2004. The $23,660 that it was changed to in 2004 was equivalent in 2016 dollars then to $29,968.
Tracking pay is a cost of doing business. They track other things and so now they have to do the same with their most precious asset: Workers.It will be interesting to see how they will handle the effect of the admin bump in the salaries on exempt teachers. Maybe this will start a snowball effect and the teachers will be able to lobby for a raise too. Would make sense. Happy for this change. It has called out a big employer dodge.
@cnp55 I suspect it is not going to work out the way you imagine.
There’s an incentive for the business to eliminate the low salary-high hours position and switch to paying by the hour. The business will try to avoid paying anyone OT, so instead of having one weekend manager, they can have two, or three, and they will all be under 40 hours, maybe under 30 or 20. They can sell the position as entry-level or a necessary gateway to promotion.
There was a restaurant owner interviewed yesterday on the news. He admitted that they will just hire fewer new people, change hours of the managers, delay raises. He said it is similar as to when minimum wage changes. Raise prices, cut hours. I inferred that the last option would be for the owners to actually lose money.
I agree that people are taken advantage of, but this new policy will hurt workers. I agree with twoinanddone - no owner is going to say, “OK, gee, I was wrong - I will pay the employees more and lose money!” Not going to happen.
In HI, if you work 3 weeks consecutively at 20 hours or more/week as an employee, you’re entitled to health insurance benefits. There are lots of jobs (including part-time judges, admin help at schools, etc) which keep employees working under 20 hours a week and easily avoid this. Either that or they call employees “independent contractors.”
Employers are used to finding ways of minimizing labor and benefit costs for companies.