So I work as a pharmacist overnights.
I've been working for a few years with a 7 on/7 off schedule where I work for an 11 hour shift. Meaning 11 hour shift for 7 straight nights and then I am completely off from work for the next 7 nights. Now, we are being told that our shift will be changed to an 8 hour shift and because of this, we have to work 4 days a week and every other weekend. So instead of being paid for 10.5 hours per shift, now it's 7.5 hours per shift and because of that, I will have to work 10 nights in a 2 week period instead of 7 nights, and I cannot work more than 5 nights in a row. Because of this, I will never have more than 2 straight nights off. Makes it impossible to readjust to a daytime lifestyle which I normally do the day after my last shift and then live like a non-vampire for the next week until I return to work.
I asked the union about this and they claim that my old shift of working 11 hours a shift for 7 straight days was a illegal shift and now my employer is in compliance and it's fine because they still gave me advanced notice about the shift change. I mentioned that the 7 straight days off is the whole appeal of the shift and now there is no appeal to working nights and that I turned down chances to move to day shift many times because I liked how much time off I had with my old schedule because it enabled me to travel without using vacation time and allowed me to work a second job as well as run a side business.
I asked the union that because I turned down the chances to move to days, they should request that I be moved onto day shift and anyone less senior than me on day shift be moved over to overnight and they reacted like I asked something completely out of the question.
Are there any actual labor laws being violated here? Was my old shift actually illegal? I just don't see how this shift change helps the hospital or the employees or the union other than there will be some days when there are 3 pharmacists on duty at night while before there were only 2 on most nights (and only 1 if one of them was on vacation, now even if someone goes on vacation, there will still my 2 pharmacists on most nights.) Even then, it was never really a busy shift so now there will be some days where there are 3 of us sitting around instead of 1 or 2 of us sitting around.