It’s Time To Abolish Forced Overtime
The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region. Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter based in Halifax.
Gather ‘round and let me tell you a tale of one of my proudest moments, and my first ever job. It was the summer of 2002. I was 16 years old and had a job as a counsellor for a summer recreation program. And boy, talk about trial by fire in the work-a-day world.
This was the most stressful job I ever had. There were 30 kids and three teenagers charged with their care — and it was physically impossible to keep an eye on all those hyper beings running around outside. Every day I thought to myself “if anything happens to one of these brats, it’s my neck on the line.”
All for a little more than $5 an hour.
It may sound weird that so much pressure was on a gang of teens to keep all those younger kids safe. But all summer long we had very little support from management.
Everything came to a head one day when the three of us essentially unionized over an unjust decision.
I grew up in Labrador and there used to be a popular beach festival every July. Us counsellors were required to work at a vendor booth that weekend to raise money for the summer recreation program. This was perfectly fine because we were told about this requirement when we first got the job.
But on late Saturday afternoon, our supervisor told us, roughly an hour before our shift was to end, that we would be made to work into the evening. Sales were going so well that she wanted to keep the momentum going.
The three of us were angry. When you’re a teenager, social life is of the utmost importance. We had already made plans to spend time with our friends that evening. The three of us huddled together and decided we would refuse to work overtime.
Our supervisor was pissed; she suggested our jobs could be on the line; she went to town councilors (this was a municipal program) to see what could be done about us rebellious youth; she told us pay could be docked, which was weird considering we worked our mandated hours.
Despite these threats, we stood firm. We later found out the rest of the town, who saw and overheard this public dispute, had our backs. It seemed like common sense to most people that an employer can’t just willy-nilly decide an employee should be forced to work more hours than they had agreed to.
Twenty years later, I now realize that what seemed like common sense to a kid doesn’t seem to be common sense to a lot of adults. In this time of “great resignation,” more and more employers seem to think it’s their right to use “mandatory overtime” to fill in the gaps.
I’m here to tell you this is wrong, regardless of how important the job is.
Mandatory overtime should be used only in legitimate emergencies. And no, chronic staffing shortage is not an emergency. Staffing shortages are caused by the failure of management to offer competitive wages, make workers feel appreciated, or create a positive workplace environment. Quite often it’s a combination of these factors that lead to mass vacancies.
On top of that, mandatory overtime may be the most counterproductive concept I’ve ever heard of. People are leaving a profession because it’s no longer desirable, or even tolerable. Yet management decides to force the remaining poor souls to burn themselves out and have their personal lives suffer. This will only lead to more resignations in the days, weeks, months, and years down the road.
It is the perfect example of a vicious cycle.
And, in our new Covid-19 world, we are seeing the negative effects of this cycle. Just look at the deteriorating situation within Halifax Transit. This summer, 75 trips per day have been cut as a continuous stream of drivers resign or go on extended sick leave.
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The job is notoriously stressful due to the number of hostile passengers that drivers must deal with while simultaneously trying to safely drive a gigantic automobile.
Due to the major shortage, Halifax Transit has likely been adding to the burnout by using mandated overtime. The transit union’s president, Shane O’Leary, told me recently that a driver could work 96 hours a week under the worst-case scenario. This happens even though drivers are unionized.
But O’Leary explains that the union has a different interpretation of what defines the use of mandatory overtime.
“That forcing clause [in the contract] was intended to cover for emergency situations, on a one-off, rare occasion. Now there are 10, 15, 20 people being forced every day.”
The most infamous and problematic use of forced overtime in our society is with nurses. These poor women and men work one of the hardest jobs imaginable. Yet, we have normalized burning them out and chasing them away from the profession because of government’s chronic failure to address healthcare issues.
Every provincial government has acknowledged there are major issues in healthcare, many of which are related to a shortage of doctors and nurses. Yet health authorities act like they can retain these workers (with competition coming from everywhere) by treating them like mere cogs in the machine.
I know many nurses who left the job early in their careers. They all have similar stories: their personal lives suffered immensely and they felt disrespected and devalued by management.
How do we ever expect to “fix healthcare” if so many of the frontline workers don’t even feel valued by their employer? In Nova Scotia alone, there are roughly 1,000 nursing vacancies.
Many in power have argued mandatory overtime for nurses is a must because they are essential workers. I agree, they are essential. And that’s the exact reason we shouldn’t make them work themselves to a breaking point.
Employers should be able to incentivize the extra hours but the final decision should rest with the individual nurse. Period.
The idea of abolishing the practice is starting to gain steam. Back in 2021, nurses were refusing to work overtime and called on the government to ban the practice altogether.
And if you’re tempted to blame the boogeyman that is Covid-19 for these shortages, look at this article from 2019. In it, CBC reported nurses working 24 hours in a row.
That’s not how you treat an essential worker. That’s not even how you treat a human being. How many relationships, marriages, and social lives have been tarnished by health authorities doing these things?
One thing I have noticed recently is a major shift in how people view their personal lives. In a new world where people have realized the benefits of working from home, and discussions are happening about four-day workweeks, more people value time over money.
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If we don’t abolish archaic practices that force people to live only for their careers, our staffing crises will only get worse.