This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Small_Tooth on 2025-01-09 13:49:32+00:00.

Backstory: For the passed few years I’ve been a nurse. I spent the first part of my career in the emergency at a small hospital in Canada (we can do basic admissions, surgeries and critical care but will transfer the really sick ones to larger metropolitan hospitals with more services like cardiology or trauma surgery). Because the population we served was so small, we ran with the bare minimum of nurses to keep the department afloat, usually resulting in an extra patient per nurse compared to other hospitals but with a lower acuity level (on average) so it balances out. As a result, we would often be overwhelmed during the second half of the day shift and the start of the night shift when it was most busy but due to low volumes of patients later on in the night we often were well enough staffed to easily handle the workload (i.e. we could safely run even fewer nurses, but management hadn’t gone there). Secondly, because we ran with such a small number of nurses, we never had break cover, so if your nursing partner was on break you would watch double the number of patients (not a big deal at night but during day this could result in missing our last 30 minute unpaid break on the day shift due to high workload). A last piece of info is that we used teams of one “emergency” nurse (a nurse extra training to have a higher scope of care) and one “med-surge” nurse (seasoned nurse awaiting a spot in the additional training program). Because of this, the nurses would give and take report together, so instead of each nurse handing over 4-5 patients simultaneously they hand over 8-10 together, so report takes twice as long.

Our union had negotiated our contract to counteract any wage theft, allowing us to sign for our unpaid thirty minute break at overtime rates of 1.5x pay (we missed this break maybe every other day shift, so once during a two day, two night rotation) as well as sign for an additional 15 minutes of straight time pay in case handover went over our 12 hour shift (which was always). Of course, management didn’t like having to pay this out, but it wasn’t an issue because we (the nurses) were also stealing time. I know it doesn’t sound great, but on those quiet night shifts, we would often take an extra 30 - 45 minutes to sleep, which balanced out those 1.5-2 hours of lost pay from the day shifts and handover. Because the workload was so low at the time and because only one emergency physician was on at night, it could be easily managed by one nurse, so patient throughput was the same as if two nurses were working (we often sit around waiting for orders from the doctor). Furthermore, nurses always left their number with their partner so we could be called back early if it kicked off and needed all hands on deck. Obviously, if we had many very sick patients, we stuck to the entitled amount only or missed it entirely. Everyone was happy for the first few years I worked there, the management (and therefore government) saved the extra pay without affecting patient throughput and the extra sleep time on break really helped to maintain nurse well-being as well as making the switch from nights back to days much easier.

Then one of our less-pleasant charge nurses got angry at this. The charge nurse role is like the boss of the unit. On most units with admitted patients, this was a an 0800-1600 Monday to Friday type gig that was covered by regular bedside nurses when the charge nurse wasn’t there. In emergency however, we had specific nurses working rotating shifts in this role with a small pay bump and any gaps in the schedule filled by very senior emergency nurses as it was a much more unique beast to manage. I say this only to give benefit of the doubt that this nurse was probably stressed out like crazy every shift. So I’m sitting at work in the morning, waiting for the inevitable onslaught when the email pops up stating night shifts are to be limited to union mandated break time only. I’m a bit pissed off at it, but ultimately they’re right. We’re only entitled to a 60 minutes of unpaid break time and 45 minutes of paid break time. And to be fair, some nurses were definitely abusing the previous system (one nurse who covered charge would advocate for over 3.5 hours of break time on a night shift regardless of how sick the patients were and that would affect patient safety as it bled into the first part of the night when we actually still busy, most of the nurses refused to follow them on this). However, people like this were rare, most nurses don’t come to the emergency to be lazy.

This email soon gets posted in our group chats so everyone’s aware. A lot of the younger staff (millennials at this time) were aware of our rights and immediately started signing for all missed breaks as well as additional handover time as well as helping the older staff understand the contract. I missed my last break that shift and stayed until quarter past shift change for report, so I got an extra $50 gross on my paycheque for that. The charge nurse on that day was surprised when I presented to OT form for their signature, but I just told them I was following the rules to prevent any pay discrepancies. My next shift (at night) there was a sign in sheet on the desk for us to write our in and out time for breaks (with a space for our phone number too, so they could call us back, even though were weren’t payed the extra $4 an hour to be on call and calling us back should have been paid at overtime rates per the contract). I refused to leave my number, stating that unless there was a code blue (medical emergency-usually means there’s no pulse) there was no way I was coming back early. Code blues were called overhead, so they didn’t need my number. For the next two weeks, I stuck to the contract. Every missed break and extended handover was documented, and of course I signed in and out of my breaks on the dot. I spent so much time on night shifts staring at my phone waiting for the doctor to give me something to do as I’d caught up on everything else. It might not seem like a lot, but that extra hour of handover pay + occasional missed breaks per shift set would have added up to roughly $2000 extra per year per full time nurse, which is a decent amount of change to a publicly funded healthcare system. Eventually the manager noticed and came around clarifying that while they would sign for any extra wages if we wished, we could also choose to sleep extra on nights if we wished providing we left our number. I asked for them to email that to me, and while I could have sent that straight to the union rep I didn’t bother, as I had already gotten the sleep time back.

I left that job later on and have been very happy at a much bigger hospital for 2 years now. Now I have a nurse come cover mine and my partner’s break, there’s no “teams”, and they encourage us to take longer breaks when possible to prevent staff burnout (which was really prevalent at this one). I now document my missed breaks and extra sleep time to make sure it matches up. They’re also willing to sign for missed breaks on top of that to help staff retention but my conscious doesn’t let me go that far. I’m just happy to sleep.

TL;DR Told to not take longer sleep breaks on quiet night shifts, so we start claiming unpaid OT from day shifts.