The nurses of Healthcare-PSEA/AFT had a message for the Pennsylvania Legislature on Oct. 2: It's past time to end mandatory overtime. Joined by colleagues from the state's other unions, the Healthcare-PSEA members were part of a crowd of 2,000 that rallied on the steps of the capitol in Harrisburg in support of proposed state legislation that would put severe restrictions on hospitals' ability to impose mandatory overtime.

The legislation would allow mandatory overtime to be used only when a state of emergency has been declared by the federal, state or local government. (A state of emergency related to a labor dispute would not qualify as one in which mandatory overtime would be allowed.)

In a state of emergency, the proposed legislation stipulates, hospitals must first solicit volunteers before mandating overtime. Hospitals that assign overtime in violation of the bill's restrictions would be required to pay the affected employee eight times the regular rate of pay for the hours worked.

Not surprisingly, the bill is opposed by the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, which claims that limiting overtime will exacerbate the nursing shortage in hospital units. But Healthcare-PSEA president Ralph Hickle calls mandatory overtime "a threat to patients and a prime reason why nurses are leaving the profession." He points out that in other professions involving safety concerns--such as truck driving or airline piloting--the law puts limits on the number of consecutive hours that can be worked. "All nurses are asking for is that similar legal protections apply to their working conditions so that they can safely care for patients," Hickle said.

He added that mandatory overtime often puts nurses and health care workers in the position of choosing between discipline for refusing overtime and the equally difficult consequence of shortchanging both the quality of care they can provide to their patients and their ability to attend to their own families' needs. "Mandatory overtime endangers patients, puts nurses and health care professionals in an untenable bind and drives dedicated people away from their profession. Healthcare-PSEA will fight alongside our fellow unions to win legislation that will end this dangerous practice," Hickle said.