[kristycarberry]

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/bus...9436599.htm?1c

According to this article, RN's won't be getting overtime anymore! I think this is so ridiculous...I feel so sorry for that poor guy in the article!!!!

[1mg.epi]

There is new Fed. laws. I think it is only if you make greater than $100,000 a year you do not get overtime. The law sounds very vage to me. Need to check with your supervisor. I do know that the law is to decrease the use of over time pay vs. comp time.

[Anonymous]

This law pertains to salaried people and stupidvisiors...OH sorry.... Not all of them are..


WR,,, three commas for Becca

[LJDT]

This is the fact sheet regarding overtime for nurses from the Dept of Labor website. The link leads to the info that I copied and pasted here.

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/complian...17n_nurses.htm

Fact Sheet #17N: Nurses and the Part 541 Exemptions Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

The FLSA requires that most employees in the United States be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hour worked and overtime pay at time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek. However, Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. Section 13(a)(1) and Section 13(a)(17) also exempts certain computer employees. To qualify for exemption, employees must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $455 per week.

Nurses

To qualify for the learned professional employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met:

The employee must be compensated on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week;
The employee’s primary duty must be the performance of work requiring advanced knowledge, defined as work which is predominantly intellectual in character and which includes work requiring the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment;
The advanced knowledge must be in a field of science or learning; and
The advanced knowledge must be customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.
Registered nurses who are paid on an hourly basis should receive overtime pay. However, registered nurses who are registered by the appropriate State examining board generally meet the duties requirements for the learned professional exemption, and if paid on a salary basis of at least $455 per week, may be classified as exempt.

Licensed practical nurses and other similar health care employees, however, generally do not qualify as exempt learned professionals, regardless of work experience and training, because possession of a specialized advanced academic degree is not a standard prerequisite for entry into such occupations, and are entitled to overtime pay.

[kristycarberry]

WASHINGTON - The deputy labor secretary yesterday defended federal overtime rules that will take effect Monday from charges by organized labor that they would lower take-home pay for up to six million U.S. workers.
The rules will strengthen, rather than erode, protections for workers' pay, Steven Law said.
The administration-drafted rules redefine the criteria that determine which administrative, professional and executive employees get federally mandated time-and-a-half pay after 40 hours.
Ultimately, how employers use the rules and how overtime is redefined will be determined in administrative judgments and courts.
People in an array of occupations, including some registered nurses, nursery school teachers, store and restaurant managers, computer workers, funeral directors, and chefs, are likely to lose their eligibility for overtime pay.
On the other hand, the rules guarantee that anyone earning $23,660 a year or less is eligible for overtime pay. Until now, only workers who made less than $8,060 a year qualified automatically. The administration says 1.3 million lower-income and blue-collar workers in fields such as retail, manufacturing, food service and hospitality will gain from the change.
Other likely losers are in a new category of "highly compensated" workers who will be exempt from overtime pay. They earn at least $100,000 annually, and perform some administrative duty such as managing one or more employees.
Police, firefighters, and other "first responders," plus practical nurses, health therapists, and some military veterans, are exempt from the curb and are eligible for overtime pay regardless of earnings. Also exempt - from any part of the rules - are union members who are working under collective-bargaining agreements.
Critics of the new rules worry that six million workers, most of whom earn $23,600 to $100,000, could lose overtime pay depending on the way their employers interpret the rules and define their jobs.
A recent study sponsored by the AFL-CIO found that, with the large exception of the higher-income threshold for overtime eligibility, "in every instance where the department has made substantive changes to the existing rules, it has weakened the regulatory criteria for, and thereby expanded the reach and scope" of exemptions that make employees ineligible for overtime pay.
"They certainly have a different view of the rules than we do," Law responded.
Many think the new rules simply make the overtime exemptions easier to understand and apply, said Liz Snyder, an employment law consultant with Hewitt Associates, a human resources-consulting firm in Lincolnshire, Ill.
"I think they clarify and modernize the exemptions," said Snyder, who advises companies on how to comply with the new rules. "The intention is not to erode overtime protections, and it doesn't appear that they're doing that."
Karen Dulaney Smith, a wage-and-hour consultant in Austin, Texas, said there were problems in the rules' fine print.
For example, the rules redefine which workers are salaried professionals exempt from overtime pay. Under the old overtime rules, registered nurses were considered professionals, but because most were paid hourly wages rather than on a salary basis, they were deemed eligible for overtime pay.

The new rule allows earnings for professionals exempted from overtime to be "calculated on an hourly, daily or shift basis." That could allow employers to halt overtime pay even for registered nurses who are paid by the hour, according to labor groups that banded together as the Coalition to Preserve Overtime Rights for Registered Nurses.

The threat worries Philadelphian Charles O'Donnell. He is a registered nurse and a single father of four who works 16 to 20 hours of overtime a week at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. The extra hours boost his annual earnings from $60,000-plus to more than $90,000.

He said he needs the extra money to pay $1,700 a month in child support for his four daughters, because the court based his payments on his overtime-fueled income from the last six years.

"It locks me into needing that overtime in order to live," O'Donnell, 44, said. "If I couldn't work that overtime and wasn't able to meet my bills and child support, I go to jail."

Phyllis Fisher, a Jefferson hospital spokeswoman, said there were no plans to alter any nurses' overtime status. But Smith, the Texas consultant, said that could change if competing hospitals cut back overtime. In that case, Jefferson might have to do the same.

"Or they won't be able to compete," she said. "They're going to be in a situation where other employers are going to take advantage of the new possibilities and they can't."

Eve Markewich, a New York partner with Philadelphia law firm Blank Rome L.L.P., said she was advising her corporate clients not to use the regulations to cut overtime pay.

"We're telling people that taking away benefits that employees already have is always a very difficult and ill-advised thing to do," Markewich said. "The reality is that most employees won't stand for it."


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[Anonymous]

Good morning..


There is also a law and I can't site it at the moment. That says healthcare workers can be paid on a 14 day basis..And they could lose OT that way.. i.e. 50 hours week one and 30 hours week two ..With no OT paid on the 50 hour week.. To equal 80 hours in a two week period and no one enforces it. Because nurses would squak.

Hourly paid nurses are not in jeopardy here.


WR,,, three commas for Becca

And as far a salary exempt. My ex would never work a job where is didn't get his overtime. And he worked factory work.. Just say no.

P.S. If you just love this law and it's implications for nurses (if enforced to the T) vote for big business ( i.e. Corporate Hospitals such as Vencor, Tenant etc) and the status quo. If not vote for change...IMHO..

[kristycarberry]

Ok, then I am confused. According to the above article, RN's that are paid hourly ARE in danger of losing theier OT:

" 'The new rule allows earnings for professionals exempted from overtime to be "calculated on an hourly, daily or shift basis.' That could allow employers to halt overtime pay even for registered nurses who are paid by the hour, according to labor groups that banded together as the Coalition to Preserve Overtime Rights for Registered Nurses."

So, are you saying that these people are out to lunch and there really is no danger? I still think it's a load of you know what that anyone's OT is being taken away. That's what we should all vote for...corporations to have more money and us to have less! Makes sense to me! grrrr...

[Anonymous]

Kristey when it says exempt it means exempt from the law not overtime.. It means that the law doesn't pertain to us.

We, RN's, are exempt from the law to not pay OT..Kind of a double negative. But that's how the government tries to fool us...

Please read the interruptaion on www.dol.gov Read the part about RN's . I am not to happy that they did say it could affect LPN's though...GRRRRRRRRRRRr..

As I said in my previous post the hospitals or nursing homes probably won't enforce it. I don't believe they have to..

I'm hoping you aren't still upset with me about the eating the young thingy. It's just one of my pet peeves and I hate the saying and it's implications.. I was really just running my mouth and it wasn't intended to you per se..

Friends ??????


WR,,, three commas for Becca

[kristycarberry]

Oh gosh no, I'm not still upset with you! I sent you a message back I thought! Of course we are friends!
Thanks for helping me out with what this law pertains to. Apparently the article was not correct, since they were saying that it would affect the RN's. I thought the story about the nurse losing $30k a year was just insane!

[Anonymous]

Whew!!!!!!!!!!!!!



WR,,, three commas for Becca