Pushing our luck?

mjindra

We run a two-shift operation, first shift is from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. (five days a week) and second shift is from 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. (four days a week).

Because our workload is slow, on Monday night, during second shift, the Supervisor told the employees if they could agree on an acceptable shift for the rest of the week, he would allow them to switch their hours. (i.e. coming in at 10 a.m. and leaving at 8 p.m., etc). One employee didn't agree to change because of prior commitments and the whole shift was "stuck" with their regular hours. And yes, the whole shift knew that this was due to one employee.

On Tuesday night, our Supervisor mandated that the shift come in early, starting at 8 a.m. and working until 6 p.m. The same employee that bucked it the first day, said, "You can't do that, it's illegal." He ended up taking vacation for the first half of the day, (the supervisor approved it to avoid problems with him), so the employee will be working only from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. closer to his regular shift.

What have we done, opened up a can of worms, exercised our "at-will" privileges, pushed our luck?

Thanks!

Melissa

Don D

What you have done is to allow the dissenter to take part of his vacation time to avoid having to fire him for insubordination, quite the right approach for this 'short term change' in shift time. What would be gained to have bucked-up to the dissenter and demand this or that from him? But, he was wrong to claim 'it's illegal'. There's nothing illegal about it. Neither the state nor the federal government has any control over the assignment of shift hours. Yet.

LindaS

You, as an employer, are allowed to mandate what hours employees work. We have the same situation in that the employees requested some shift changing due to the holiday and because things are slow, we are able to accomodate the request, as long as the entire shift agrees. We had one person who didn't agree and luckily she went out on vonuntary layoff. Had she not, she would have been told to either come into work, utilize vacation or take "points" under our attendance policy. We were not going to make an entire group of people suffer because one wants to be a ____!!!

As far as the employee using his vacation, go ahead and let him as long as it complies with your policy. He's just burning up his time and allowing the rest of the people the opportunity to shift their schedules around a little - great for morale!

LeeR

I agree we have a right to set the hours of work. That being said I think the supervisor should have just announced the time change without trying to be so diplomatic. Asking everyone's opinion only gave the ee in question the feeling that he could buck the change. I say make the change and if the ee doesn't accept it they can find work elsewhere.

mjindra

Thank you for all of your feedback everybody! I knew I could get quick, realistic answers from this group!

Melissa

Safety Witch

I'd like to play devil's advocate here. Have you considered that your employee may have some hardship by changing his hours? Perhaps he has child-rearing duties during the day while his wife works. Asking him to come in early may cause childcare issues that he hasn't mentioned or doesn't care to discuss.

Under WA worker's comp laws on transitional duty, we have to offer the employee the same shift hours, if at all possible, in order to accommodate the employee's current schedule and personal life issues.

Perhaps your employee is going to school and he will miss classes if forced to change his hours. Perhaps he has a second job to support his family and this will jeopardize his second income.

Have you tried to talk to this employee to find out exactly what his objections are? Are there other ways to accommodate him if he has a valid objection?

Safety Witch in Washington State

HR in CA

All of the answers are great, however I wanted to add that reassignment and the company's right to change hours as business dictates should be a written policy and in your handbook. We recently added the reassignment, due to this type of issue. It comes lawyer recommended!

Hunter1

WOW! The joys of being in a non-union environment! Many employers would be in the position of having to pay overtime if they switched hours away from the employees' 'regular' hours.

Nina I

To HR in CA - I would love to see a version of what you implemented - we are in CA, too, and this issue has come up at our laundry plant. Unfortunately, I think it's happening due to a night supervisor making last minute changes to employees' schedules if she doesn't like them, or wants to make it hard for them to come in, so that she can discipline them, in an effort to ultimately get rid of them. This supervisor is well protected by her Division Manager, so unless someone files a formal complaint, it's hands off for me. Very frustrating. Any info would be great.