Obligatory apologies for spelling and grammar mistakes. My wife is the ELA teacher, not me.
Some background: I work for an aircraft maintenance facility, and this happened a few years ago. My specific line was understaffed, underpaid, and way over worked. Our normal hours were 07:00 to 15:30, M-F. Not terrible, aside from the aforementioned issues. One week, we started hearing rumors of mandatory OT. What started as normal 5-8's, quickly turned into 5-10's. Next, they made us do 6-10's. 6 days a week, 10 hours/day. One day off, then back at it. Us workers began to wonder when this was going to end. I should mention at this point, that in order to collect 7th day pay, one has to work from Sunday to Saturday, without using any PTO.
Next thing we knew, we are told mandatory 7-10's. This announcement was made on a Monday, and effective immediately. We have no choice but to comply. Those familiar with burnout know how this went.
This schedule continued through that weekend, and into the next week. All this time, us Poors kept telling management that we would actually run out of work soon, which would result in people being sent home, or to one of the other lines, in search of work. This was ignored, of course.
Friday of the second week rolls around, and lo, we are out of actual work to do, moral is at rock bottom, and this is when they choose to drop The Bomb. Mandatory OT is cancelled, and the line will be closed the next day; do not come in. Doing this allowed them to not pay any of us the “nice” 2x pay, even though, at that point, nearly all of us had worked over 10 straight days. Because it has to be Sunday through Saturday. Monday through the next Friday doesn't count.
There was a bit of a silver lining to this, however. Due to the contract for that line, a lot of people got in trouble for that little stunt. Not fired, as they probably should have, but, it's something.