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I am seeking responses from flight services who are not based at a hospital, but are at a satellite location about how your flight crew is compensated when the helicopter is down for maintenance.
Currently, our hospital's policy is to either a) send the crew home if the aircraft is not going to be up and running prior to the end of their shift and the crew has to use their vacation time or take the remainder of the shift unpaid or b) the crew may choose to drive to the hospital, which is 60 miles away and work in the Trauma Center for the remainder of their shift and will be paid their full shift pay. We work the basic 24/48 hour shifts.
Also, we are only paid 1/2 of our hourly rate from 0200-0800, which they consider to be "sleep pay", but if we get a flight, we get the full hourly rate for the entire shift.
We have brought these issues up to our new Administrator and he is willing to re-visit the policy, if we can show him that other programs use a different system. If anyone would be willing to share their policy w/me, I would greatly appreciate it. We all feel that when our a/c is down due to no fault of ours, we should not be penalized and have to use our vacation time or take the time unpaid. We also feel that since we are required to stay at work for 24 hours at a very remote location, we should be compensated for the full 24 hours, rather than the 18 we are currently paid full hourly rate for.
If you prefer, you may respond privately to me.
Thank you in advance for your responses.
Christy Foster, Flight Paramedic