Different pay depending on area - is this common

[Jacobero]

I recently transferred from a med/surg floor to the NICU, and found out that now that I'm in the Dept of Women's and Childrens, that my shift differnetials are reduced by 10%. When I was working med/surg I would get 20% of my base rate for evening diff, and 25% for night. Now it's only 10% and 15% This wasn't explained to me when the offer was made...the only thing I got was from HR that said "NICU is offering you this job, here is your rate of pay" followed by the typical HR crap of me being a valuable member of the hospital community.

This just seems wrong on many levels, but was curious if this is a common practice in other area. I am contacting the director of HR tomorrow to discuss the fact that this information wasn't presented to me when the job offer was made, something that I think should have been done. Needless to say, I'm irritated, as I turned down another position at a neighbouring facility as I didn't have all the information.

Thanks everyone in advance for thier input.

[Miss Ludie]

This seem odd to me. One thing I thought of is perhaps your NICU isn't actually a part of your hospital, but a division of the Children's Hospital? Maybe sharing a building but not a budget?

[Jacobero]

No, that wouldn't be it, we don't have different hospitals. We have different departments, for example, Dept of Medicine, Dept of Women's and Children, Dept of Surg

At least I'm not the only one that thinks this is odd. My hospital has done a few sketchy things since I've started working there, like cutting the accrual of paid leave time (and then "giving it back") and changing the weekend track program and cutting pay of people who have been working weekend track for a while. This apparently has been going on for years, and I think it sucks.

Personally, I would bail and find a new place to work, but I'm 2 months from having a baby and now is not the time. I may jump ship once I'm off of maternity leave tho.

[MikeyJ, RN]

I don't know how common it is but I do know that certain hospitals may pay better for certain areas in demand, and it may not be the base pay that changes from different areas but differentials. Perhaps your med/surg floors have a low retention rate and a very high turn over rate, thus they may give those nurses higher differentials.

[Nursebarebari]

Nope, I live and work in NYC and the pay in my hospital is uniform. I heard that critical care used to get more but that changed many years ago.

I don't understand why you are getting less in NICU (CRITICAL CARE) than in med/surg (regular unit). This is odd, if anything you should be getting more. may be you should contact your union if you have one or just talk to the HR director as planned.

goodluck

[RN1989]

Yes it is common to have different differentials for various areas. Critical care and ER generally have higher salary offers or diffs. Some places that have problems getting L&D staff offer it. Other places offer higher $ for med/surg/tele since those are often the hardest units to keep staff due to the high volume of work and stress. Sounds like they do not have problems keeping nurses in NICU there so they do not offer the extra incentive. And no, they usually do not tell employees this unless your are a new applicant and looking at different areas to work in. Most people do not care about the diff and are usually just trying to get away from whatever specialty they dislike so it often does not make a difference it they are told about the $ change or not.

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

This is new to me, but I guess I am not surprized. I also live in New York, and work for a union hospital. The rate of pay is the same, however, experience pay, creditation in certain fields are added in, but even that is uniform, so to speak.