Cooperate cut our hours to part time :/

[camci]

My first LTC/CNA job and I love it, despite the low pay, my relationship with the coworkers and residents are what keeps me staying to gather some experience.

However in less than a month cooperate comes in saying since not everyone is taking 45 minute breaks, they have to cut our hours to part time and we are now short on aids every shift. Night shift, the one I work, now has 3 aids for 4 halls, can you imagine how hard that is if someone calls in?

We never finish our rounds on time now, ever, and aids are now quitting because they can't support their family with partime so now we're really short.

A nurse told me cooperate does this at least once every other year or something and it gets fixed quickly because sooner or later we'll be so understaffed that management will have to help with shifts because they cant hire anyone because no one wants to work parttime and for so much work.

Has this ever happened in your facility?

[interceptinglight, CNA]

Our facility has 64 beds. When the census is below 60 we are required to take 45 minute lunch breaks to offset that they're making less money. It's either that or they'll force us to work with one less aide, so we opt for the longer lunches. This nickel-and-dime attitude all the time is what really discourages me about working in LTC. It's already bad enough when we're fully staffed -- when someone calls in and they can't find a replacement it's sheer hell.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

I was working at a corporate-owned nursing home a couple of years ago and, when census dropped below a certain point, all of the CNAs and floor nurses were forced to clock out for a 1 hour lunch break instead of the usual 30 minutes.

If someone usually got 40 hours per week, these forced 1-hour lunch breaks reduced their time to 35 hours per week, which resulted in a noticeably smaller paycheck on payday. However, this nickel & dime tactic never works, because hourly workers will eventually quit and find employment at workplaces that will offer full time hours. Once the facility has lost too many workers, management has to spend a bunch of money to recruit and train new CNAs and nurses to replace the ones they lost.

[yousoldtheworld]

When I worked at the hospital, our unit census was so low that aides got called and told not to come in all the time. Sometimes I would get only 16 hours a week (I was supposed to get 32), and it became impossible to make a living. That's why I left.

I guess I'm lucky in that my current facility is always short enough that I can easily get all my hours...AND our lunches are paid. We work 8 hour shifts (not 8.5, like most places) and don't clock out for our lunch. The downside to this is that if one of our residents has an emergency while we're at break, they can interrupt our lunch.

Your facility will probably stop doing this, because they'll likely lose a lot of employees, I'd imagine.

[caliotter3]

Do what CNAs did at one facility where I worked. When they were cut hours, they simply went across the street or across town to another facility and were welcomed with open arms.