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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I used to work overnights and that is exactly what happened. In fall you work an extra hour and get an hour of overtime. In spring your shift would be an hour shorter. The company I worked for still paid us that hour so we got paid for an hour we didn't actually work which was nice.

Had the same deal when I worked it also.

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

As a doctor, we would work and hour more or less depending on the shift changed. Im paid a supplement to work out of hours rather than by the hour, so we'd just suck it up of working an extra hour and be happy if we worked less.

If you're paid hourly then you'd be paid for the time you worked.

But shift starts and finishes were unchanged, it was just the length that got altered.

Typically, your shift is just an hour longer/shorter. Though, I've worked for companies that tried to scam me, and pay me for 8 hours on the night with 9 hours, under the guise that they would pay me 8 hours on the night with 7. Nope. I don't trust your ass, and I don't know that I'll still be working here in 6 months. I'll take my $8.75 for tonight, tyvm.

In some sectors the clocks don't change for DST. For bulk energy the grid clock is out of sync with "people time" for half a year.

The operational side of the aviation sector operates on UTC, or "Zulu" time. In my area, "aircraft time" is always 4 or 5 hours out of sync with "people time".

Our 12hr shift folks did 13 hours last night. Anything over 12 in one shift is double time pay, so there’s that.

Yup Lemme tell you, adding an extra hour onto what was already a 13hr night shift on hospital wards, for no extra pay, was roooouuugh

They were probably breaking labor laws if they weren't paying you for the DST extra hour you worked. They have to compensate you for actual time worked.

If one is salaried… that’s probably not true.

Hourly it’s absolutely true, though.

Many salaried employees are misclassified to begin with though

My friend is a night shift nurse and he just told me that his job turns that hour into overtime. Because the rules is a shift is a very specific set of hours and anything above that is thrown into overtime pay.

Are y'all unionized?

Yes.

I was in operations working the DuPont schedule for over a decade. Concerning DST, you work an extra hour, with pay, or work a shift that is one hour less, depending on which direction the clock is moving

When we worked the 11 hour shift (normally 12), as clocks spring forward, you would be compensated a full paycheck if you had no overtime hours, as the company was forced to pay you a full 2 weeks of wage for the pay period. If you had any overtime hours in that check, your pay would reflect 1 hour less to cover the shortage due to the time change.

Some companies pay the full 12 hr shift when the clocks spring forward, but mine didn’t.

I used to work at a transplant coordinator, and you had to account for every minute of time an organ was on ice. There were a lot of extra notes for those nights, because while the software for charts was automatic, the doctors would look at in and do the math wrong.

I also worked through a leap second New Years Eve, but we didn't really need to do anything with that.

I had to work overnight during a clock change.

All I had to do was log 10 hours, so it didn't really matter.

Yes, that’s how we do it. Employees on 8 hour restrictions go after 8 hours though

What’s an example of an 8 hour restricted role / rule? Is it a medical reason thing or nature of the job or something? Never heard of it before

I think semi truck drivers and locomotive drivers are restricted by hours.

Employees who have documented injuries can get an 8 hour restriction. We have a ridiculous amount of overtime where I work.

Work extra in fall. In spring it's up to how your supervisor wants you to do it.

When I worked on a ship, we coordinated with the other 12-hour shift so both of us got 30 minutes of the offending hour.

At my work the people on shift either leave an hour early (when clocks go forward shift ends at 7am and leave at 7am for example) or they leave early (shift ends at 7am but you leave at 6am after being there a full 12 hours) depending on which way the time goes.

When I was working shifts, we either got one hour less on the shift, or we got on hour extra break. Still sucked

I've got an hour to go on my shift. It was just an extra hour of working on my nixos htpc config that I'll get paid OT for.

I worked security at an amusement park and happened to work a late shift when we switched to DST. Instead of getting off at 3 a.m., we all got off at 4 a.m. We were all pretty pissed because we didn't get OT.

Yup. The change in the us happens at 3am, so who ever is working gets a longer or shorter shift.

If you’re hourly, your time gets cut (and you maybe get overtime on the long night… if you’re full time,)

2am -> 1am. Here in Seattle our bars close at 2am, I was told they aren’t supposed to stay open the extra hour, but the local bar near me did the only time I was there for the change.

So, I’ve worked nights and I’m not sure. I know that when I worked nights I didn’t know that the clocks changed. I just clocked in when it was my normal time and clocked out when it was my normal time. So, my guess is extra hour and less one hour. But honestly it probably varies.

Well firstly, any new staff inevitably ask the 'do we work an hour more/less' depending on the circumstance.

Aside from that, not much else changes. One Sunday morning I'd finish at 6 and then six months later I'd have a Sunday where I finished at 8.

Fortunately I never worked Sunday nights, so I never felt like I was losing much after work time.