Please explain "forced overtime"/"mandatory overtime", in shift work?

February 17, 2023 6:00 PM

I can't find the answer by Googling it. Every shift is scheduled. Wherever it happens, if everyone shows up when they are scheduled, how can there be forced overtime?
posted by amfgf to Work & Money (17 answers total)

Around here, they add shifts. So if scheduled for 5 shifts a week normally, the forced overtime is a 6th shift. So not an extended shift, just more shifts
posted by Ftsqg at 6:05 PM on February 17, 2023

Or there are expected doubles, or an expectation that you have to clear the customer that you are working with even if it takes you 40 minutes past the end of your shift, or whatever. There are many ways to force overtime!
posted by rockindata at 6:15 PM on February 17, 2023

If they don't have enough people, they force the people they have to work more than 40 hours a week. That's forced overtime.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:21 PM on February 17, 2023

Just because every shift is scheduled doesn't mean it's been adequately scheduled. My mom would get forced overtime as a nurse when the hospital overbooked surgeries while understaffing nurses (could also happen during a major event like a multi car accident, but it was usually poor scheduling). The really crappy thing was they'd wait 'til day of to say btw, figure out alternative child care because you have to stay.

There are various other reasons that will vary by industry for forced OT. Could be a factory line was down for a while, so now there's forced OT to make up for lost time in hitting targets for deliverables.
posted by ghost phoneme at 6:21 PM on February 17, 2023

The obvious reason would be if there are not enough workers to cover all the shifts. If you have 100 shifts to cover, and each worker normally covers 5 shifts, you need 20 employees to cover all the shifts without overtime. If someone quits, is fired, takes a vacation, etc., then you either cover less than the full 100 shifts, or force the remaining employees to work overtime to cover the remaining shifts.

But yes, it may also be that the number of shifts are not the same every day/week. If the company doesn't keep up with hiring (whether through inaction, low wages, lack of appropriately skilled workers, etc.), they can get into a situation where the number of shifts needed grows faster than they can hire/train.
posted by yuwtze at 6:21 PM on February 17, 2023

Often, people do not use 'overtime' to mean working beyond the usual or expected schedule. Instead 'overtime' means working more than a certain number of hours in a certain period, like 40 hours a week. In some jobs, it might be routine and normal and expected to schedule workers for, say, 45 hours a week. That could be called 5 hours of 'forced overtime'.
posted by Perplexity at 6:37 PM on February 17, 2023

As a hospital nurse I worked many a forced overtime shift, or more often part of a shift, maybe 4 hours as they tried to coax another nurse to come in early. It was called "mandation", and if the unit would be be severely understaffed for the next shift after a nurse called out sick, another nurse was "mandated" to stay until the legal limit of 16 hours working in a row was reached. The alternative would be to close beds, but if the unit was full that wasn't an option. There was a system to designate which nurse was mandated.

I understood why it occurred, but being mandated could really complicate things with daycare, school drop-off after a night shift, and so on. Management threw around the phrase "patient abandonment" if a nurse pushed back against mandation, implying that we would act unethically if we refused mandation and put our licenses at risk. It worked, even if it was an illegal threat. I once missed Christmas dinner when I was mandated from day shift to cover an evening shift that was suddenly vacant.

In another example, rail workers in the US recently threatened striking because they are routinely forced to work without days off or even sick time. I believe some of their demands were met but not the time off. They are still forced to work far more hours a week than I can even contemplate
posted by citygirl at 7:28 PM on February 17, 2023

A lot of great examples of how the need for workers to work overtime comes to be.

To address the "forced" part, it's usually the threat (implicit or explicit) of being fired if you don't comply, or of being ostracized within the workplace culture if you refuse.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 7:34 PM on February 17, 2023

Overtime can be beyond a normal workday, such as you have to work more than the normal 8-hour workday, or work more than the standard 40-hour workweek (such as weekend shifts).

Mandatory just means you cannot "opt out" of it. Usually overtime is optional, depending on company needs and your own desires. Generally, both have to agree for overtime to occur. "Mandatory" just means that company decides you need to be there and schedule you, even though you didn't agree to it. If you don't show up, you are punished as per company policy for no-show.
posted by kschang at 7:47 PM on February 17, 2023

I think California's the only state where working more than 8 hours (or your normal shift, if it's normally longer) on a given day counts as overtime. In most (all?) states in the U.S., though, working more than 40 hours a week counts as overtime, if you are a non-exempt employee (meaning you qualify for overtime payment). So if your employer schedules you for more than 40 hours a week, or forces you to work it unscheduled, that would be forced overtime.
posted by lapis at 7:57 PM on February 17, 2023

Overtime Pay fact sheet from the US Dept of Labor

The federal overtime provisions are contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Unless exempt, employees covered by the Act must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek at a rate not less than time and one-half their regular rates of pay. There is no limit in the Act on the number of hours employees aged 16 and older may work in any workweek. The FLSA does not require overtime pay for work on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, or regular days of rest, unless overtime is worked on such days.

The Act applies on a workweek basis. An employee's workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours — seven consecutive 24-hour periods. It need not coincide with the calendar week, but may begin on any day and at any hour of the day. Different workweeks may be established for different employees or groups of employees. Averaging of hours over two or more weeks is not permitted. Normally, overtime pay earned in a particular workweek must be paid on the regular pay day for the pay period in which the wages were earned.

posted by lapis at 7:59 PM on February 17, 2023

There's also forced/unpaid overtime, where staff are expected to come into work 10, 15, 20 or even 30 minutes before they officially clock on, but they don't get paid for that time. And over the course of a year, that time really adds up.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:30 PM on February 17, 2023

Standard bedside RN schedule in a hospital is three 12 hours shifts in a week- 36 hours is considered full time. More than that (extra partial shifts or working 4 12s) is mandatory overtime.
posted by MadamM at 12:41 AM on February 18, 2023

We have rotating weekend duty where there are only four people working at a time and the work isn’t possible with fewer than four people. If someone calls out on a weekend shift and if no one on the OT list accepts the OT, the lowest person on the list is required to come in.
posted by sciencegeek at 2:01 AM on February 18, 2023

Thank you all. I'm amazed. How can there be such thing, as being asked to come in earlier stay, later, etc., and not even get paid for it? Aren't there labor laws against that kind of thing? I can see it in health care fields where it would be necessary, to require staff to stay until someone on call arrives. But whatever kind of organization it is, why would they think it should be unpaid? Can someone clue me in? This is in a Western countries (although probably in some where that's not likey to happen ) we're talking about.
posted by amfgf at 4:47 PM on February 21, 2023

Apple reached a settlement in a lawsuit over off-the-clock work Aug. 15. Store workers said the technology company didn't pay them for the time they spent on security screenings after their shifts ended.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:16 PM on February 21, 2023

I have heard some employees try to get paid for travel time.
posted by amfgf at 5:47 PM on March 2, 2023