I’m interested to get your thoughts on this because this is completely new to me.
The company I work for is four days a week and 10 hour shifts. Voluntary overtime on Fridays and Saturdays. They provide a decent amount of PTO and sick leave at the beginning of the year, regardless of how long you’ve been an employee there. 80 hours PTO, 40 hours sick time, 40 hours floating holiday, and 40 hours of holiday pay. You can also not use any of it and roll it into the next year and have double that.
Here’s the kicker though, if you call off, even for one day, you must use PTO or come in on a Friday to “make up the hours.” If you do neither, you’re disciplined (i.e., verbal warning, write up, etc). When I first started I didn’t think much of it. But once you see your PTO balance run out faster than you think it should, it starts to get your attention. Personally, I am all out of PTO for the rest of the year because of an illness followed by recovery from a procedure I had earlier in the year.
Today in a morning meeting, we were told that starting next Friday, overtime would be mandatory. We were also told that if we were unable to come in on a Friday we must use PTO to make up the hours. Even if you worked 40 hours before.
I don’t want to say that this is illegal (it may be, I’m not sure), but it is definitely unethical in my opinion. It’s a way for the company to control their employees by making us burn through our PTO and using that as leverage.
What do you guys think? I’m definitely looking for a new job after that overtime announcement.
I’m in Colorado by the way.