What do overnight shift workers do when the clocks change?

multicolorKnight@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 189 points –

If you are at work in the middle of the night when the clocks change, do you work an extra hour in the spring and one less in the fall?

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At my hospital it's just luck of the draw. If you get the night shift in the spring, you work an hour less while being paid the same and in the autumn you're working an (unpaid) extra hour.

The craziest thing was when my girlfriend had a patient die of non-natural causes during that night. In these cases, police have to be notified so they can investigate whether there was any wrongdoing. The police arrived a few minutes before the time of death of the patient, because in the meantime the clocks had been moved back an hour. Apparently they had also never had that situation before, so they were unsure how to document it correctly.

That bit about the pay sounds highly illegal

If you are salaried, it isn't. But we know that salaried always mean you must work your full week and sometimes extra hours without more pay. But it never means you can work less hours with the same pay.

This is not true where I live (New Zealand). Any hours over the weekly maximum specified in the contract (no more than 40 per week) are considered paid overtime. Additionally, the employer can't unilaterally reduce the number of hours from what's written in the contract.

The US also has 'salaried - non-exempt' which would require the employer to pay for time above 40 hours. Manufacturing jobs aren't allowed to be exempt from overtime pay. It is generally white collar workers that are allowed to be exempt from overtime pay.

I believe part of being exempt requires you to be over 2 or more employees and have a say in businesses decisions. (Not 100% sure about the business decision part. Been a while since I read up on it.)

I assume you'd notate 1:15 EST then an hour later 1:15 EDT for standard vs daylight saving