legal question about off duty mandatory meetings

Hmm...seems strange that they would only hold one meeting, and penalize those who are on sick leave or vacation, or may not know about it. Are you sure you didn't misunderstand? I've known of places that marked you down on evals or something if you didn't complete mandatory activities, but have never heard of a penalty as severe as 3 days suspension without pay.

Ideally, a meeting like this should be scheduled more than once, and at different times of the day...but if you have many employees (I have 65) working a variety of shifts and days, it's tough to do. So you end up having the meeting a couple of times and try to get as many staff there as possible.

Mandatory things should be available in a variety of formats, like "read and sign" packets, online, and face-to-face meetings.

I'm not a lawyer but I agree that a mandatory meeting must be made known to all, must be paid for (including travel time in both directions, since a lot of people spend a lot of time in traveling to and from work), must allow for exceptions for sickness, days off, and other [erfectly legitimate reasons. Here's what I would do - go to the boss now and tell her I will not be able to come in because it is going to be my day off and I have a couple of appointments made. If she wants to give me a different day off, tell me now so I can reschedule my appointments. If not, she can give me the meeting topics now so I am sure to get them.

You could also wait until the day of the meeting then call and say you have no sitter, if you have young kids, or you're sick. Or call after the fact and make some excuse. I guess you could always say you forgot, since it was your day off and you were busy with so many other things.

I once attended a church service in which the guest minister said that the ushers were to lock the doors and not let anyone out until the minister said it was ok. Well, that is called false imprisonment. I had to pee in the worst way. I was really afraid I'd wet my pants and was fighting back waves of urgency and lots of pressure. I knew I was about to got involuntarily so I went to the door and told the usher it was urgent. He didn't want to let me out so I told him I was honestly about to flood the floor and that, if he didn't let me out, I'd sue for false imprisonment. He let me out - reluctantly. I haven't gone back to church since. Just another example of how ridiculous things get sometimes and your boss' decree reminded me of this example.

They cannot require you to come in without pay, but if they are paying you for that time then YES they can make it mandatory. I was terminated for failure to attend a mandatory meeting although I was sick.

all meetings are on their time...they can require you to come in but most facilities will give some leeway such as allowing you to miss a couple in a years time
they also make it better for you to come in such as paydays scheduled for the day after but checks are given to those who attend meetings
they are stricter witht the cnas because the state requires that they receive a certain amount of inservice hours
nurses can arrange CE in different locales, on line, at a different facility etc

of course meetings that affect the procedures at a specific should be attended but they should also be made available at different times