Changing terms of work agreement

[SunDazed, BSN, RN]

I work at a non-union hospital. I was hired to work three 12 hour night shifts with no restrictions except working every third weekend, plus expectations for working holidays. There is a new director in town. He has restricted the day shift to M-F and the night shift to M-Th. All of the changes have come down with no opportunity to object. Now he has changed some day shift people to 11a-11p instead of 7a-7p without asking them. The 11a-11p shift never even existed before the current schedule. I don't have anything on paper that I can find that says what the terms of employ were. I feel like I must have signed something. What can I do? I asked to be return to the original terms of hiring and he told me I was being negative. I don't have many options as far as leaving the hospital so don't offer that please. Any ideas?

[caliotter3]

I was reading some material from the labor board (my state) one time that stated the employer can change the terms of employment as long as they provide 24 hours notice to the employee. Based upon that, if the same is true in your state, I would say you don't have much of a choice.

[elkpark]

Unless you have some kind of written contract specifying that the hospital is obligated to provide you a specific schedule, you're probably out of luck. Every hospital I've ever worked, the employer was free to rearrange your schedule to meet the needs of the facility if necessary (it usually says that somewhere in the employee handbook and/or HR policies -- they usually try to not go out of their way to tick people off, but, in the end, they'll do what they feel is best for the facility, not for you.

The hospital at which I work prn just switched around the schedules of a bunch of people who have been working the same schedule for a long time, without even discussing it with them first -- they just have different schedules on the new schedule that was just posted, and that's how they found out. (Of course, my facility is not typical -- it's like the management wants the staff morale to be as bad as possible ...)

[caliotter3]

Unless you have some kind of written contract specifying that the hospital is obligated to provide you a specific schedule, you're probably out of luck. Every hospital I've ever worked, the employer was free to rearrange your schedule to meet the needs of the facility if necessary (it usually says that somewhere in the employee handbook and/or HR policies -- they usually try to not go out of their way to tick people off, but, in the end, they'll do what they feel is best for the facility, not for you.

The hospital at which I work prn just switched around the schedules of a bunch of people who have been working the same schedule for a long time, without even discussing it with them first -- they just have different schedules on the new schedule that was just posted, and that's how they found out. (Of course, my facility is not typical -- it's like the management wants the staff morale to be as bad as possible ...)

This is the type of behavior shown by my employers over the years. Typical.

[SunDazed, BSN, RN]

Thanks for the replies. We don't have a lot of staff on our unit, 1/3 are seriously talking about quitting or at least transferring to another unit. I am willing to stick it out a while, partly because all the other units have new directors that are throwing everything up in the air to see what happens too. My answer to that is gravity squared. Certainly seems to be taking steps away from team building and self-governance. I don't think as a manager I could live with myself if I didn't at least try to let people know what was up and why. Really weird to be treated like the average 7-11 slurpee maker instead of a skilled and educated professional.