Hourly vs Exempt Salaries

cbjbta · Sep 12, 2004

Boy! am I glad I found this site. My CEO is wanting to replace my hourly wage with a salary. I work in a rural hospital. I am currently the specialty clinics cooridinator, in charge of central sterilizing department and the surgery department. I am held accountable if it dosn't get done. I am also required to work the floor X1 monthly. I work 5 days a week, 40 hours or more not counting my weekend 12 hour shift I have to do. I have to work the floor because they are short of professionals on the floor. I have been a nurse for 23 years. I have always given 110%. I will not leave a job undone and have never taken advantage of my employer. I am not sure about this salary offer. I am unsure what would be best. If they are pushing for it - it kinda sounds like it will benefit THEM not me. What do you all think????

jemb · Sep 12, 2004

They are not doing it for your benefit! They can get out of paying overtime if you are on salary, but not if you are hourly.

You might want to do a search and read some of the threads/comments regarding the recently passed overtime bill.

Karen_tn_37211 · Sep 12, 2004

I have worked both hourly and salary. I will NEVER work salary again. They tend to give you so many job responsibilities that it takes 60+ hours/week to get it all done. You work 60 hours or whatever a week for the same amount of money. When you divide the salary you make by the hours you work it comes out to peanuts. At least with hourly, you get paid for each of those 60+ hours.

cbjbta · Sep 13, 2004

Living in a rural area the nurses we have are nurses that have been here forever and are not going to move on to greener pastures. I have found the more I do the more they expect and I am getting buried. I struggle just to keep my head above water with the day to day work let alone trying to get the "management" paperwork done. Yes - I do get overtime but earn it and ?? If nurses are in short supply, where are they going to find even part-time help to fill my overtime?? Isn't it worth paying overtime to a employee that is willing to do the job and do it right??

ratchit · Sep 14, 2004

I am a new grad and I recently received a job offer from a hospital where nurses are salaried and not paid by the hour. I have never heard of this and was rather confused regarding pay. I was told that in order to qualify for overtime pay you have to work 4 hours extra. But I don't know one nurse that ever gets out on time so I don't want to get screwed if I consistently work 1 hour extra every shift but don't get paid for it. Also, does that mean there's no holiday pay? I must be missing something, since I live in Boston and there's tons of hospitals to work at. There must be some kind of incentive for nurses to stay here. Does anyone have any experience with this?
Thanks!

Find out what it means- talk to a nurse or two who work that floor if you can to see how it is actually implemented.

It might be something negative but I know that at least one hospital system in Boston got a new contract within the last 12-18 months- and heard they got everything they wanted. I can't see that hospital, or any hospital competing with that one for nurses, trying to pull this kind of stunt.

The only hospital I worked at that had nurses on salary was a small one in NH- and they had a very loyal nursing staff. They were salary but got OT (I can't recall if it was over 36 or over 40 hours per week.) All "salary" meant was they got paid if they were cancelled for low census. They would bring you in to have an "education day" or "project day" instead of being cancelled and using your PTO to get a full paycheck.

So it might mean lots of unpaid OT, but I doubt it. It also might mean you don't lose money or vacation time if the census drops. Definitely worth asking about!!

SmilingBluEyes · Sep 14, 2004

I would RUN the other way.

LadyMadonna · Sep 14, 2004

Do you have a choice about taking a salaried position or by the hour? I'd definitely choose hourly. They only offer that salaried position because they know initially you will look at that nice sum of money and think it is a good deal. But remember, they are never going to make you an offer where they don't think they will get the better end of the deal.

Ross1 · Sep 14, 2004

Obviously there appears to be wisespread concensus that hourly is the way to go as a staff nurse. Salaried positions have their advantages, but only, when the usual amount of overtime worked is kept to a minimum. I've always appreciated my past non-nursing salaried positions because no one was watching when I came and left. The driving principle was that a salaried person did what was necessary to get the job done. This means staying late if needed without additional compensation. At the same time, it also means not getting docked if one leaves early or arrives late. I've always appreciated the freedom that this gave me. As long as one doesn't abuse the system, in my experience, it was never a big deal if for some reason I had to leave work early at 2:00 for some personal reason. In fact, under the labor laws of many states, a salaried person must be paid for the entire day, even if s/he leaves early.....though I have had some supervisors who have forgotten this and H.R. had to intervene.

With nursing though....the work is never done and nurses are always working overtime....and when do you get the opportunity to leave early? Salaried positions for staff nurses benefits no one other then upper management who gets away with paying you less. Don't even consider it!

RN4NICU, LPN, LVN · Sep 14, 2004

Obviously there appears to be wisespread concensus that hourly is the way to go as a staff nurse. Salaried positions have their advantages, but only, when the usual amount of overtime worked is kept to a minimum. I've always appreciated my past non-nursing salaried positions because no one was watching when I came and left. The driving principle was that a salaried person did what was necessary to get the job done. This means staying late if needed without additional compensation. At the same time, it also means not getting docked if one leaves early or arrives late. I've always appreciated the freedom that this gave me. As long as one doesn't abuse the system, in my experience, it was never a big deal if for some reason I had to leave work early at 2:00 for some personal reason. In fact, under the labor laws of many states, a salaried person must be paid for the entire day, even if s/he leaves early.....though I have had some supervisors who have forgotten this and H.R. had to intervene.
With nursing though....the work is never done and nurses are always working overtime....and when do you get the opportunity to leave early? Salaried positions for staff nurses benefits no one other then upper management who gets away with paying you less. Don't even consider it!

When you are working as a nurse in the clinical setting, you cannot leave early. You can't take off at 2:00 when your replacement doesn't arrive until 3:00 or 5:00 or 7:00 (well you CAN if you don't like having a nursing license). If you arrive late, the offgoing nurse is going to be ticked because he/she can't leave until you get there. The principles you mention cannot be implemented in the clinical setting - you are responsible for watching over the patient until your replacement arrives, whether you are actively providing care or reading a magazine (HA! yeah right!). Sure you could be paid for days not worked under salary - but how often does that happen? What is much more likely to happen is being required to stay over and/or pick up extra shifts and wind up not getting paid for those (under a true salary setup, which is very rare in the clinical setting because it just doesn't belong there).

OP - Find out what salary means. I have worked where it meant that if you work less than X hours (got low-censused) you were guaranteed to be paid for X hours anyway, but you had to work Y hours before you got overtime. That is not as bad a setup as your position earns $X per year or per month, no matter how many hours you work - That would suck, plain and simple.

My sister is salaried (not a nurse) and she works 60-70 hour weeks sometimes and almost never leaves early. Her salary is pretty good, but when you break it down into an hourly, it's crap. However, she is not watching over human lives. If she needs to leave early, she leaves early. The papers she is working on will take care of themselves --- human beings, who are sick enough to be hospitalized, obviously cannot do this.