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It's anybody's guess if it stands a chance of passage, but a bill waiting in the wings in Congress could make time-and-a-half pay an optional commodity.
The Support the Family Flexibility Act in the House and a companion bill in the Senate would give employers the opportunity to give workers compensatory time in the place of overtime pay.
The catch is that employers would be able to choose when that comp time could be used. If the employee wasn't allowed to use the comp time during a 12 month period, then he or she would be paid the overtime rate.
That's a worry for some in the nursing community, who see potential for abuse by hospitals seeking to increase mandatory overtime by taking away the financial incentive of putting in extra hours.
Nurse staffing remains an issue of concern throughout the United States as hospitals and health care facilities wrangle with a shortage of medical personnel, says Chris Donnellan, spokesman for the American Nurses Association. As more nurses exit the profession and fewer people seek jobs as nurses, Donnellan says, changing overtime laws would only exacerbate the problem.
"One of the main reasons (many nurses are dissatisfied) is mandatory overtime and we feel this (bill) does nothing to address that problem and, in fact, would encourage them to have mandatory overtime," Donnellan says.
Mandatory overtime isn't much of a concern in Tennessee, says Wanda Hooper, a registered nurse, president of the 2,500-member Tennessee Nurses Association and a nurse epidemiologist at St. Thomas Hospital.
The problem with the proposed bill, she says, is that it leaves the decision about overtime vs. comp time in the hands of the employer. With the immediate financial gain of extra pay for more time on the job, the danger is that fewer nurses would be willing to volunteer to work overtime. Given the shortage of nurses in the industry. If that becomes the case, the door opens for hospitals to demand overtime, Hooper says.
"As a practicing nurse, when I was in direct care I worked overtime because I wanted to make extra money. If that wasn't one of the offerings, I might not choose to work overtime," Hooper says. "If the employee was able to make the decision, that would be much preferred."
The bill was scheduled to go to the floor of the House on July 10, but was pulled back in the face of mounting opposition from labor groups, which hope it won't receive enough support to make a return, Donnellan says.
"We lobbied hard to have them (nurses) contact their representatives. (Republicans) won't bring this up unless they feel they have the votes to get it through," he says.
Earlier this year, a measure to address mandatory overtime - the Safe Nursing and Patient Care Act of 2003 - was introduced in Congress, but has remained largely dormant, lacking the support believed to be needed for passage.
The act would prohibit hospitals receiving Medicare funding from requiring a registered nurse or licensed practical nurse to work more than 12 hours in a 24-hour period or more than 80 hours in two weeks. It also includes nondiscrimination protection for nurses who refuse overtime. The legislation includes exceptions for national, state or local emergencies.
Mandatory overtime as an issue of importance is a nonstarter says Kristin Morris of the American Hospital Association's legislative team.
"Only in the rarest of situations do we see an environment where people are required to stay on to make sure patients are taken care of," Morris says. "(Hospitals) try to make sure our work force is adequately covered and it's rare that we do have a crisis where we do have an overload. I think those are the exceptions and not the rule."
When similar mandatory overtime legislation was floated last year, it drew 100 supporting co-sponsors. This year, the number is 76 and mostly Democrats. The odds are long that the bill will make it through Congress, Donnellan says.
"It's tough. It's a long road," Donnellan says.
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