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Pardon my ignorance, but if you are REQUIRED to remain at the site 0200-0800 (presumeably upon pain of discipline if you were to leave or go out for pizza etc) then you are 'working' as I understand it. If you were to leave for coffee, and the employer disciplined you, wouldn't the courts hold that in order to be able to discipline someone they have to be under the jurisdiction of the diciplinary body? If not working, employer has no jurisdiction. On the other hand, if working, must honour contract / collective agreement. If however the contract specifically provides for 50% pat from 0200-0800, they yoiu would need to renegotiate that. As I understand it a management ploicy canoy alter a condition or clause in a contract/. Just as a contract cannot waive rights or alter overtime rules etc mandated by legislation. As to reporting pay, if you show up for a shift and are cancelled, is there not a clause that provides you with 3 (or whatever) hours of pay? And if you are fulltime, and are at work when the bird goes mechanical, wouldn't that be covered in the contract as being sent home without pay? It sounds like that is what is happening but that the employer is saying that if you want to recieve a full paycheck you must use lieu/vacation time. Do they do the same for other staff at the hospital? Say for example a number of rooms on a ward are closed due to infectious agents or something and are awaiting disinfection - do they send ward staff home without pay? Make the case for equivalent/equal treatment. However I think that you will be told that you can recieve full pay only if there is other work to be done at the satellite base, or if you go to the main site to finish the shift. Travel time however should count as work time (both ways - since the satellite base is your normal work location). The 24 hour shift is going to cause problems. It might be better to set up a list of low priority QU/QI tasks, admin chores, I.T. projects and equipment maintenance or on-demand (via distance learning) inservice training that could be coinsidered as assigned work that could be done instead while remaining at the base. Just a few thoughts. Fly Safe. Ken L-W CCEMT-P/WMT "If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead." - Gelett Burgess --- message from Christy Foster <floridaflightgal@yahoo.com> attached:
- From: Christy Foster <floridaflightgal@yahoo.com>
- Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 12:53:13 -0700 (PDT)
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
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