St. Vincent's/Tenet Mandatory Overtime Contract Language (Verbatim)

Overtime

1. The Hospital shall exercise its best efforts to maintain full staffing in order that overtime work be kept to a minimum.  Where overtime work is necessary on any unit, the Hospital will use its best efforts to fill such needs with volunteers from on or off the unit where such work is needed, and from on-duty and off-duty nurses.  If there are insufficient volunteers, the Hospital shall request coverage from its per diem nurses and nursing agencies.

2. If after following the process outlined in paragraph 1 additional help is still needed to cover patient care, the Hospital may require a nurse to perform a reasonable amount of overtime work, provided that no nurse shall be required to work more than 12 consecutive hours.

3. An overtime list consisting of staff nurses shall be maintained for each unit.  The list initially shall be set in order of reverse seniority unless otherwise agreed by the nurses on the unit.  Overtime shall be assigned to an off going shift nurse in accordance with the unit list.

4. Any nurse may refuse overtime for personal fatigue or personal illness.  If overtime is refused, the overtime will be assigned to the next nurse on the unit list.  A nurse who refuses an overtime assignment shall be placed on the top of the unit list.

5. No nurse shall be required to work overtime more than twice per calendar quarter.

6. Following every occurrence of overtime work under paragraph 2 above, an occurrence report documenting the time of calls and responses and the details of all other efforts made by the Hospital to cover the overtime at issue shall be filed by the nurse manager on whose unit the overtime was worked and be sent to the VP for Patient Care Services and the Association chair person.  The nurse manager and the nurses affected by the overtime will meet with the Staffing Committee at the next scheduled Staffing Committee meeting to review the conditions leading to such overtime.

7. Any grievance submitted under this Section shall be processed under the AAA rules for expedited arbitration rather than the procedure set forth in the Grievance and Arbitration provisions of the Agreement.
 

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