2nd-shift factory worker forced to come in for 1 hour on his day off to help cover gaps in shift handover after the 1st shift complains about overtime, raising the issue of the personal cost and burnout

The schedule is the manager's problem to sort out. But that has never stopped any shift work manager from asking the employees to find coverage for themselves instead of on any day that they request off or even when they need to take sick leave.

For larger scheduling issues, like in the story this factory worker shared, the road of least resistance (aka the least effort for the manager) is to simply push the issue onto the employees themselves, forcing them to do some additional task rather than making the sweeping organizational changes that would need to be made to fix the actual issue.

And that's because organizations are resistant to change; if they were to tell their own boss, “The entirety of second shift is unhappy that they're working overtime every week and we need to alter the entire schedule." The boss isn't going to be too happy about that, as it represents a major organizational shakeup. Much easier to just make first shift come in and cover the gap, just hand-wave the fact that they're not actually even scheduled to work that day at all, and you have your problem sorted!

The frustrated factory worker shared how management had responded to the first shift's complaints about their own overtime covering that extra hour by making the second shift come in instead. See their account of events below.

My work is making me come in for an hour on my day off, every week so that first shift doesn’t have to work overtime.

So I work 2nd shift at a factory. My work is from 2pm - 10:30pm Sunday through Thursday. First shift works the mornings, Monday through Friday. Since we don’t run on Saturday there’s a bunch of end of the week tasks that first shift has to do on Friday before they can leave. Recently orders have been up so they’ve been struggling to get their end of the week tasks done on time and have been forced to stay around an hour or 2 extra every Friday.

Well, they complained to HR and everyone that it was unfair to them that they had to work overtime every week but we don’t which I do agree with. But my works stupid decision was to bring our entire line in every Friday at 2:30pm JUST IN CASE 1st shift hasn’t finished yet and the idea is that if they need an extra hour then we will take 30 minutes and they take 30 minutes but if they need more than we do more, if they need less then we will be sent home but we are guaranteed only an hour of work.

An hour of work is barely worth the gas I spend to get there and it’s 100% not worth the 20 minutes to and from and the my entire day being ruined by having work in the middle of the f** day. Now, I can’t make plans until after I get off and if I do then I better make sure to finish them quickly. It just ruins the entire day off to have work in the middle of the d*** day like that even if it’s just a little bit. I have to put my stupid ass work clothes on and drive all the way to work just for an hour. It f** s**cks and is so dumb. Even on the days we immediately get to go home, i still have to show up and waste my time and gas to drive there.

In many places, there are minimum hours that employees must be paid for if they report to work, whether it is a day that would normally not be a working day for them or not. This type of thing is typically put in place to keep shifted work from scheduling on a bunch of workers that they might need and then just send the ones that you can get away with sending home, home on the day if the volume of work doesn't meet the rostered man-hours. That's all well and good for the business because they can ensure that, no matter what, they have the appropriate staffing levels, but for the workers that are consistently getting shorted on their scheduled hours, it presents a huge problem. Especially when a few hours a week can make the difference between making rent and coming up short. 

Plus, in situations like this, there's the whole issue of spending your entire day just waiting to go into work for a short shift, not fully able to switch off because you know that you're going to be working later on and need to be ready to go. These types of minimum hour guarantee policies help with this, because if you get called in on your day off, at least you can't be called in for only an hour's pay and might end up with half a day's pay for an hour or two of work.

But where these policies don't exist, it presents a tricky situation for the workforce. At least, for this type of shift work, there is an entire shift of other workers who might be willing to let their voices be heard, just as the first shift did, which is what prompted the change in the first place.

See what some of the readers had to say below.

Tacos_Polackos

In my state "minimum legal scheduled shift" is 4 hours. If they schedule you and you show up on time, you get paid minimum 4 hour

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p0396

Is there anything 2nd shift could do in advance on Thursday night by staying an extra 30 minutes to make Friday quicker for first shift?

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EmpZurg_

Look into local labor laws or even company/union rules because its not uncommon for a minimum 4 hour of mandatory pay to apply to all call ins.

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Few_Carrot_3971

“No.”

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ArrivalFantastic4324

It’s time to look for a new job.

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notyeezy1

I get 4 hours just for showing up to a scheduled shift
Whether there’s work for me or not.

Worked great in my favor at a previous job where I had to remote in and program some cameras for about an hour lol. My boss would usually tell me to gear up and get to the bar bc I got 3 hours on the clock so I have to hang out with him and have beers and lunch on him

Anyways, idk where you’re at OP but hopefully you have a similar employment law where you’re at. Look into it asap. I wouldn’t show up for MAYBE an hour of work.