Holiday staffing policies

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Hi,

I work at a facility where RNs work both 12 and 8 hour shifts. Until now, all RNs were required to work 3 holidays a year, for an 8 hour shift. The holiday worked was paid at time and a half with another 8 hours of paid time off in exchange. Yesterday it was announced that 12 hour employees will now be required to work 12 hours on their holidays while only receiving 8 hours off another day in exchange for the holiday. Despite having to work a longer shift, these employees are still required to work 3 holidays a year. Anyone else out there work in a facility that offers both 8 and 12 hour shifts? How are holidays handled?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

Required to work 1 summer (Memorial Day, 4th of July, or Labor Day) and 1 winter holiday (Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years), same length of shift of whatever one usually works.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Critical care.

Supposed to work 1 summer and 1 winter holiday. Double time for all 12 hours or 12 hours leave if you are off on the holiday. Benefits of working in a union hospital.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

OP: I worked at a place not unlike you described. They would do their best to schedule the 12-hour people for only 8 hours on holidays, but the 12-hour people knew that if it wasn't possible, then yes they would be working their 'normal' 12 hours. As for getting "only" 8 hours of holiday time off, quite simply the 8 hour people were also getting the same time off--no extra time for those who worked 12 hours on another date.

It's unfortunate if the 12 hour person gets stuck with a full 12 on a holiday (is it up for negotiation, like in case staffing can manage it? Some people would be perfectly happy to work a mere 4 hours on a holiday and get paid for 6). But that's how it goes.

It could be worse, though: for a long time, the 12 hour person who worked on a holiday got only 8 hours at time-and-a-half; the thinking was that the last four (or first four) were on "another day". Seriously? If you came in at 7a on Christmas Day and worked until 3p, that was time-and-a-half. But if you stayed to work 3p-7p, it was regular time.

When everyone absolutely insisted that they would only work 8 hours, PERIOD, on any given holiday, mgmt changed it so you got the full time-and-a-half for every hour you worked ON the holiday. The people it didn't help, however, were the 12-hr people who came in at 7pm Christmas Eve (NOT the holiday) and worked until 7a Christmas Day (midnight to 7 was the actual holiday, so 8 hrs at extra pay).

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

I think it's unfortunate that an organization decides to micromanage holiday schedules to this extent. As a manager (ICU) I always let my staff help me work out holiday coverage. As long as their solution did not incur any extra cost and honored the established 'rotation' (if you worked last TG, you didn't have to work it this year, etc) it was OK with me. They came up with some terrific solutions. One department decided to 'job share' all the 7a-7p shifts on holidays... so each nurse only had to work 6 hours. Everyone got a piece of the holiday to share with family. In another department, the 'off' nurses brought in goodies for those who were working... on yet another unit, the non-Christian nurses worked on Christmas and Easter & the Christian nurses did the same for their colleagues' religious holidays.

If 'big brother/sister' is making all the decisions without input from the people that are most affected. . . no one is happy.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

it's sad what is happening to the profession.....sigh

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Addictions/Mental Health, Telemetry.

I work in a small psych intake office in the ER. We self-schedule and cooperate on Holidays, including job-sharing the Day. Of course, one of these days administration will find out how happy we are and mess things up! :sarcastic:

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

If we work 12's we get scheduled a 12. And we only get $2 more per hour. We are required to sign up for 2 holidays (we count Xmas Eve and NY Eve) in the winter and one summer holiday.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in MDS/ UR.

My place doesn't pay the nurses holiday pay. Very nice.........

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Critical Care.

We never got overtime, but used to get holiday pay we could either take it if we were off, or use it for a day off another day if we had to work the holiday. They used to only schedule holidays 8 hours, but have since forced 12 hours to work the holiday. It really sucks for the night shift, you could be scheduled for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 12 hours. So even if you were supposed to be off Christmas you would still find yourself working Christmas at 7PM! It's still the holiday until 2300, but too bad that's your problem and you still need to sleep. I can't work nights without sleep anyway. Usually you have to work one or the other and sometimes both and no extra pay either! I think that is wrong and it should only be 8 hours. Also they did away with holiday pay, sick time and vacation awhile back and switched to PTO so we no longer get any extra holiday pay nor overtime! The change to PTO really screwed us over and we lost over 9+ days of pay, and lost holidays on top of that! In exchange we get disability, but is only 60% base pay!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Add a Comment