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Overtime
Pay Changes Could Worsen Nursing Shortage: 6 Million Workers to
Lose Eligibility Posted
10/11/2004 Kim Krisberg Health
workers are among the millions of professionals whose right to
overtime pay is being threatened after major changes in overtime
regulations recently went into effect. The
new rules, proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor last year,
went into effect on Aug. 23, revising U.S. Fair Labor Standards
Act provisions that govern who are entitled to overtime. The rules
make substantial changes to "tests" that are used to
determine whether a worker is non-exempt and eligible for
overtime, or exempt and non-eligible. Previously,
workers could only be classified as exempt if they earned more
than a certain amount each week, were paid a set salary or had
primarily "administrative," "professional" or
"executive" duties, according to "Longer Hours,
Less Pay," a July report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Under the new rules, the number of workers whose duties would be
considered exempt would dramatically increase. For example, the
definition of "executive" will change so as to allow
workers who do very little supervision to be re-categorized and
denied overtime, according to the report. The U.S. Department of
Labor said the reforms will strengthen overtime protections for
millions of workers, but the Economic Policy Institute estimated
that 6 million will lose their eligibility for overtime. "Millions
of families count on overtime pay to make ends meet, a need that
has only increased in importance as wage growth continues to
stall," the report's authors wrote. "If anything, the
protections that workers are afforded under the (Fair Labor
Standards Act) should be further strengthened, not weakened." To
protest the changes, hundreds of workers gathered in front of the
U.S. Department of Labor on Aug. 23 to demand their overtime pay
eligibility be restored. Among the rally speakers was Sen. Tom
Harkin, D-Iowa, who has sponsored three amendments to block the
overtime changes and ensure that overtime pay wouldn't be taken
away from workers entitled to it before. Two of those amendments
were passed in the Senate. Harkin's
colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives took up the
overtime changes on Sept. 9 with a 223-193 vote in favor of an
amendment that would force the withdrawal of the overtime changes.
The amendment was attached to H.R. 5006, a 2005 appropriations
bill, which passed the House the same day. President Bush has
threatened to veto the bill if the Obey-Miller amendment is
included, according to the AFL-CIO. The Senate Appropriations
Committee also voted Sept. 15 to block the new overtime rules, but
as of press time, the overtime changes stood in effect. According
to United American Nurses, the nation's largest nurses union, by
failing to exclude nurses from the new overtime changes, federal
officials has missed a chance to address the nursing shortage,
which is only expected to worsen. Currently, 75 percent of
hospital staff vacancies are for nurses, and more than 1 million
new and replacement nurses are predicted to be needed by 2012,
according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Yet,
under the new rules, it will be easier for employers to categorize
registered nurses as "salaried professionals" and thus
exclude them from overtime. Also, the new rules may encourage
employers to categorize registered nurses as "team
leaders," which means they can be labeled exempt "even
if the employee does not have direct supervisory
responsibility," according to United American Nurses. As
75 percent of nurses are hourly wage earners, a main issue is
whether employers will attempt to disguise an hourly wage for a
salary, thereby denying overtime, according to Chris Donnellan,
associate director of government affairs for the American Nurses
Association. Under the new rules, nurses could be ineligible for
overtime if they are guaranteed a certain amount of money each
week -- even if that money is paid according to hours worked,
Donnellan said. Of course, the rules do not require that employers
change their overtime policies, and Donnellan said he "just
can't imagine hospitals functioning without paying overtime." "We
feel that there's already a shortage and this may cause more
nurses to leave the profession," Donnellan told The Nation's
Health. "Half a million nurses have left the profession in
the last 10 years, and we've surveyed our members as to why they
left, and the number one reason is changing conditions in the work
place." According
to the Economic Policy Institute report, one reason professionals
such as nurses are paid hourly is so staffing needs are met. But
under the new overtime rules, "employers will have the best
of both compensation schemes" by being able to compel
"attendance at work by threatening to dock the remaining pay
on an hourly basis...while permitting the denial of overtime
premium pay as if the employees were salaried." However, the
report predicted that "market forces" may prevent such a
tactic from being used on nurses. "One
would hope that because there is such a shortage of nurses that
employers would be smarter than to find ways to cut nurses'
pay," Bob Lucore, associate director for research at United
American Nurses, told The Nation's Health. "Our members are
pretty upset about (the overtime changes) on a gut level. They
have this feeling that here's one more thing that's being thrown
at us at a time when we're being asked to work harder and
harder." Lucore
also noted that while other first responders such as police and
firefighters were excluded from the overtime changes, nurses were
not. That could be especially burdensome on public health nurses,
who have always been key front-line responders during emergencies
and have been heavily involved in public health emergency
preparedness projects, according to Kaye Bender, PhD, RN, FAAN,
associate vice chancellor for nursing and dean of the School of
Nursing at the University Of Mississippi Medical Center in
Jackson. Bender
noted that her students are being enticed into more lucrative
jobs, such as travel nursing, with which governmental or
non-profit public health entities can't compete. "It's
an issue of justice and fairness," Bender said. "Nurses
will go to work where their time is more valued and where they can
make more money. In public health in particular... (The overtime
changes) have the potential for making the shortage worse." U.S.
Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has said the changes will make
overtime regulations less confusing and stem "needless
litigation." However, Lucore at United American Nurses said
the new rules are so confusing that the issue will probably be
fought out in court. For
more information on the new overtime rules, visit www.aflcio.org
or www.uannurse.org.
For more news from The Nation's Health, visit www.apha.org/thenationshealth.
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