Hey all - I'm looking for input on the following situation:
a co-worker has been granted a religious accommodation to never work a Saturday (hospital ICU, where everyone is scheduled every other weekend). She does not have to work every Sunday, and they have not filled the hole her not working as created. As you can imagine, our Saturdays are horrible. I have gone to our union - NYSNA - but they are not willing to do anything.
She is also scheduled 8 hours less every two weeks than the rest of us, yet still maintains full-time benefits even though she is actually working what is considered part-time.
I'm becoming extremely resentful......am I valid feeling this way, or should I just mind my own business?
Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
Probably the best comment so far on this entire thread! I am just baffled at the folks saying that this is none of her business. It impacts her workload, therefore it IS MOST CERTAINLY her business.
I am baffled by people that feel it's a floor nurses job to staff a unit and handle ratios, and not the job of administration. It's one of the most asinine things I have seen in this thread. Could you imagine if you were having a baby and they said "too bad unless you find someone to fill your sport and deal with it so you don't put your fellow nurses at risk. You knew this was a 24/7 job" Or if you call out sick, "too bad unless you find a replacement, it will cause trouble for the other nurses because it's not our job to deal with staffing issues, it's yours".
I am also baffled by people that feel that a nurse being hired with a provision made to allow for set days off PRIOR TO BEING HIRED is that nurses fault either, or any of your business. Maybe you should go work in HR instead where you can be the one to extend the offers. Because I will tell you what, if I am hired on with an agreement that I need x days off each week and you have the audacity to come at me and treat me any type of way because your hospital administration didn't prepare for what they agreed to, it will be you in trouble for workplace harassment; and if I am missing that day because of something to do with my faith, you will have a whole other set of issues going on! You have absolutely ZERO right to treat a fellow co-worker poorly because they had an arrangement made in their offer prior to hire.
Tell you what, you better make sure you are on call EVERY SINGLE DAY! This job is 24/7, you may not take vacations, you may not take a day off, you may not have a baby, or get sick. If you do any of those things you might put your unit at risk so unless you find someone to cover a day you need off, you better be there. Staffing is YOUR responsibility! :sarcastic:
Hey all - I'm looking for input on the following situation:
a co-worker has been granted a religious accommodation to never work a Saturday (hospital ICU, where everyone is scheduled every other weekend). She does not have to work every Sunday, and they have not filled the hole her not working as created. As you can imagine, our Saturdays are horrible. I have gone to our union - NYSNA - but they are not willing to do anything.
She is also scheduled 8 hours less every two weeks than the rest of us, yet still maintains full-time benefits even though she is actually working what is considered part-time.
I'm becoming extremely resentful......am I valid feeling this way, or should I just mind my own business?
Its really not fair for them to implement a "mandatory weekends" policy and then allow someone to not work half of the mandated time if others aren't given the same opportunity.
I don't think its reasonable unless in exchange for every Saturday off he or she worked every Sunday.
That being said, you can only control your own schedule and I don't think getting upset about it is going to do anything. Perhaps you could ask her if she'd consider picking up some of your Sundays to give you a break on the crazy Saturdays?
Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. It doesn't "ban working on weekends."
Sorry, Saturday is not a "Jewish Sabbath." It is a biblical sabbath established before the Jewish nation. There are several religions that practice Friday sunset to Saturday sunset sabbath. Ordinary work is not done during this time, although many make exceptions for health care and emergency situations. Anyone strictly observing this time is eligible for religious excemption, as long as it does not place an undue burden on the employer. Many people will work alternatively to balance the scales. The employee who is not working Saturdays may have a totally different scenario that may not involve only religion, otherwise why the reduced hours and no Sundays?
The OP should be careful about involving someone's work schedule in the effort to improve his/her situation. It does not look professional, especially if you don't have all the information.
Specializes in Hospital medicine; NP precepting; staff education.
The religious issue is a red herring, I'm afraid, and creates a fertile and divisive foundation for non sequitur arguments. Various staff have responsibilities, beliefs, and preferences so it is management's responsibility to maintain coverage. Period.
I will say, however, I've appreciated the insight from other perspectives because posts like Ciamia's added to what i knew about the Sabbath. Thank you.
Hey what hospital so that I do my utmost to murmur "don't take me there" to the paramedics?
Seriously, abusing religion to get work perks is a load of crap that does not have to be honored by management. If they do, they are screwing themselves and everyone because it will naturally breed resentment.
I'm starting a religion that bans working nights, wiping poop, and getting paid less than 100K. I demand you respect my religion!
This statement can be considered silly or offensive. "Abusing religion to get work perks?" Really? If a person has a conviction, they're looking for perks? Do you know how many people lose out on opportunities because they choose to honor their religious convictions?
The problem with that is that there isn't any religion or religious sub-group that adheres to a Sabbath which doesn't also believe that caring for the sick is allowed activity on the Sabbath, so choosing not work as a direct care nurse on the Sabbath is a personal choice, not one dictated by their religion. There are certainly some restrictions, for instance an orthodox jew physician is allowed to care for patients on the Sabbath, but cannot drive there for regularly scheduled work, but can if they are on call since not driving could result in harm to someone, which means it is allowed under orthodox laws.
While it's true that the employee was able to "negotiate" to have a weekend day off every week, they did so using unethical means, and as a result it shouldn't be surprising that they are viewed negatively by their coworkers.
What unethical means did the employee use? Were you there? The OP was very unfair to bring this woman's religion into this forum, as it could have been any reason given to her employer. It not anyone's business why someone is having days off.
Also, "helping someone" on Sabbath is different to working at your career job on Sabbath. You're not volunteering and it is not a once in a while emergency. The problem lies squarely with the employer to staff the unit appropriately.
Makes me think of how I was asked to work nights yet we are always short and the manager continuously keeps letting people leave nights (too many to count). If you are so short don't let people leave nights so easily (at-least have some replacements). I have even had so nurses tell me not to work nights lol. I just told my boss I am going to days and she is fine with it. All I have to do is work two more weeks of nights and I am done. I feel your pain. Until nurses stop acting like all is well, these things will keep happening and it will get worse. This whole turning the other cheek is getting out of hand. When this person was hired there should have been a rule in place that said she had to follow all the rules of others or she would not be offered the job.
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.
The religious issue is a red herring, I'm afraid, and creates a fertile and divisive foundation for non sequitur arguments. Various staff have responsibilities, beliefs, and preferences so it is management's responsibility to maintain coverage. Period.
I will say, however, I've appreciated the insight from other perspectives because posts like Ciamia's added to what i knew about the Sabbath. Thank you.
THIS is the best comment I have seen on the thread so far.
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.
I am baffled by people that feel it's a floor nurses job to staff a unit and handle ratios, and not the job of administration. It's one of the most asinine things I have seen in this thread. Could you imagine if you were having a baby and they said "too bad unless you find someone to fill your sport and deal with it so you don't put your fellow nurses at risk. You knew this was a 24/7 job" Or if you call out sick, "too bad unless you find a replacement, it will cause trouble for the other nurses because it's not our job to deal with staffing issues, it's yours".
I am also baffled by people that feel that a nurse being hired with a provision made to allow for set days off PRIOR TO BEING HIRED is that nurses fault either, or any of your business. Maybe you should go work in HR instead where you can be the one to extend the offers. Because I will tell you what, if I am hired on with an agreement that I need x days off each week and you have the audacity to come at me and treat me any type of way because your hospital administration didn't prepare for what they agreed to, it will be you in trouble for workplace harassment; and if I am missing that day because of something to do with my faith, you will have a whole other set of issues going on! You have absolutely ZERO right to treat a fellow co-worker poorly because they had an arrangement made in their offer prior to hire.
Tell you what, you better make sure you are on call EVERY SINGLE DAY! This job is 24/7, you may not take vacations, you may not take a day off, you may not have a baby, or get sick. If you do any of those things you might put your unit at risk so unless you find someone to cover a day you need off, you better be there. Staffing is YOUR responsibility! :sarcastic:
I don't think anyone believes it's this *nurse's* job to find coverage for the floor. I do think (and have said such) that management and the union are falling down on the job. It IS management's job to ensure safe staffing 24/7. THEY made the decision to accommodate this nurse's religious exemption; they need to fix the mess it makes on Saturdays by leaving them short. The OP is upset and I don't blame her. But, No one here has even come close to suggesting harassment of the the nurse with the exemption.
The only thing I did say, is based on what I have read, the nurse *could* be a better team player, by offering to make up for all those Saturday exemptions, which would go a long way to fostering better feelings on the parts of the staff having to pick up the slack on those days. She DID take the position knowing it WAS a 24/7 deal and that weekends are part of it. She got an exemption, fine, but why not at least offer to pick up the slack some other way then?
What unethical means did the employee use? Were you there? The OP was very unfair to bring this woman's religion into this forum, as it could have been any reason given to her employer. It not anyone's business why someone is having days off.
Per the OP, it was their coworker that stated they had to have Saturdays off for religious reasons, this wasn't just assumed to be the reason.
Also, "helping someone" on Sabbath is different to working at your career job on Sabbath. You're not volunteering and it is not a once in a while emergency. The problem lies squarely with the employer to staff the unit appropriately.
Whether or not caring for patients is in keeping with the Sabbath is not dependent on whether you are getting paid in any religious doctrine. It's what you are doing, not whether or not you are getting paid.
Weekend staffing is done by weekday staffing sharing the weekend coverage responsibilities, when a particular weekday staff isn't sharing that load it gets put onto other staff, which certainly makes it their business.
I wanted to make one point I hadn't seen yet (though I admit I haven't read through everything).
It's not this person's fault she got hired and management acquiesced to her religious exemption. However, what IS a major problem is that she took up an available FTE that someone else could have been hired in that would have been willing to work weekends. If the manager was only hiring one person that round of interviews, and it was this person who had to be off on Saturdays, it was terribly unfair to the other staff to hire her in the first place.
I work in a unit where most people are tripled every Saturday. Just ONE extra person coming in makes a huge difference. It takes a triple away from two nurses. If there were only two triples in that section to begin with, just one extra body coming in gets rid of all of the triples.
Fortunately, our manager has finally agreed to start blocking beds. That's the other solution to this problem. OP - have you approached your management about blocking beds? I've made the recommendation to lots of people to go to the Joint Commission with documentation of your shift if you're working with four ICU patients. We had someone do that last year and my hospital almost lost accreditation. Once that happens, management tends to be way more friendly to the ideas of hiring travelers and blocking beds, because they will lose their jobs too if the hospital shuts down, so all of a sudden slightly more appropriate ratios start to matter to them, too.
We were so bad off last night that we blocked 11 beds out of 30. The other 19 beds were already full when we walked in. Three of the patients were 1:1s, and there were still two sets of triples, but if we hadn't blocked beds we would have had a situation where everyone that didn't have a 1:1 was tripled, so there would have been nobody available to help anyone else. Blocking all those beds saved our butts last night.
:sarcastic:
~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN
5,259 Posts
I am baffled by people that feel it's a floor nurses job to staff a unit and handle ratios, and not the job of administration. It's one of the most asinine things I have seen in this thread. Could you imagine if you were having a baby and they said "too bad unless you find someone to fill your sport and deal with it so you don't put your fellow nurses at risk. You knew this was a 24/7 job" Or if you call out sick, "too bad unless you find a replacement, it will cause trouble for the other nurses because it's not our job to deal with staffing issues, it's yours".
I am also baffled by people that feel that a nurse being hired with a provision made to allow for set days off PRIOR TO BEING HIRED is that nurses fault either, or any of your business. Maybe you should go work in HR instead where you can be the one to extend the offers. Because I will tell you what, if I am hired on with an agreement that I need x days off each week and you have the audacity to come at me and treat me any type of way because your hospital administration didn't prepare for what they agreed to, it will be you in trouble for workplace harassment; and if I am missing that day because of something to do with my faith, you will have a whole other set of issues going on! You have absolutely ZERO right to treat a fellow co-worker poorly because they had an arrangement made in their offer prior to hire.
Tell you what, you better make sure you are on call EVERY SINGLE DAY! This job is 24/7, you may not take vacations, you may not take a day off, you may not have a baby, or get sick. If you do any of those things you might put your unit at risk so unless you find someone to cover a day you need off, you better be there. Staffing is YOUR responsibility!
:sarcastic: