"Irregular" / extended working hours

[Pusser]

There is no such thing as Compensatory Time Off (CTO), notwithstanding that it happens a lot.  Short Leave is supposed to be used for that purpose.  In fact the Leave Policy Manual states:


Section 9.1 Short Leave

9.1.01 Policy

The purpose of short leave is to provide a member of the Regular Force or of the Reserve Force on Class B or C Reserve Service with time away from their duties to:

•compensate, in part, for long hours worked during extended periods of operations/training or working on normal days of rest;


It's also worth noting that the requirement for occasional overtime (without additional compensation) is part of the Military Factor in determining our pay rates.  In other words, we all receive overtime pay, all the time, whether we work it or not, but base on the assumption that we will.  Having said that, a leader should not abuse this and require people to work overtime beyond reason.  Make no mistake.  This is a leadership issue.  "Suck it up.  You're in the Army," is not a valid reason to abuse personnel under any circumstances.

 

[SupersonicMax]

(And don’t forget there is a 6% factored into an NCM’s pay and 4% into Officer’s pay for overtime)

Edit:  Pusser beat me to it.

 

[Remius]

There is no such thing as Compensatory Time Off (CTO), notwithstanding that it happens a lot.  Short Leave is supposed to be used for that purpose.  In fact the Leave Policy Manual states:


Section 9.1 Short Leave

9.1.01 Policy

The purpose of short leave is to provide a member of the Regular Force or of the Reserve Force on Class B or C Reserve Service with time away from their duties to:

•compensate, in part, for long hours worked during extended periods of operations/training or working on normal days of rest;


It's also worth noting that the requirement for occasional overtime (without additional compensation) is part of the Military Factor in determining our pay rates.  In other words, we all receive overtime pay, all the time, whether we work it or not, but base on the assumption that we will.  Having said that, a leader should not abuse this and require people to work overtime beyond reason.  Make no mistake.  This is a leadership issue.  "Suck it up.  You're in the Army," is not a valid reason to abuse personnel under any circumstances.

Yep.  But it happens a lot and used quite informally.

Examples: Working late?  Come in late the next day or leave early.  Worked on a weekend?  Take a day and stay home.  Supervisors don't have to get too creative to mange their people as long as shyte gets done.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

There is also NWD (Non-Working Days) that is auth;  this is used frequently at my Sqn.  It is possible to accumulate more NWDs in a month than the CO can authorize Short Days.  Short days for us usually come from something like being deployed during Stats; the CO will usually auth Short Days for that as the post-deployment leave usually does not give back Stats.

Some units follow a pretty hard line on duty hours;  my experience is those are units whose mbr's don't normally work outside of the posted "normal duty hours' detailed in unit orders, and are not identified as shift workers.  At my Sqn, anyone in a crew position (aircrew and maint) is deemed a shift worker in SqnOs.  This makes compensation for work "outside day worker hours" to be administered and is usually done at the crew commander and/or flight commander levels.  Very efficient, fair and doesn't suck the life out of people trying to record/admin/approve NWDs, etc.  They get entered into FlightPro as NWDs with comments "approved by Pers X on Date Y"....voila.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Yep.  But it happens a lot and used quite informally.

Examples: Working late?  Come in late the next day or leave early.  Worked on a weekend?  Take a day and stay home.  Supervisors don't have to get too creative to mange their people as long as shyte gets done.

Isn't that just managing your employee working hours?  That 's less of time off and more like managing someone's schedule so that they hit their 40 hours.

CTO is more like time off instead of OT pay.  For example, if someone works a double shift, manage their schedule so they still work 40 hours, but give them a half day of short to make up for the OT.

 

[Remius]

Isn't that just managing your employee working hours?  That 's less of time off and more like managing someone's schedule so that they hit their 40 hours.

CTO is more like time off instead of OT pay.  For example, if someone works a double shift, manage their schedule so they still work 40 hours, but give them a half day of short to make up for the OT.

Not sure how my examples really differ from yours...

 

[ModlrMike]

Hey there,

I've tried to do some research online and on this website, and I can't find anything that states the maximum number of hours a member can work in a day with or without compensation. Basically, my Sgt has it in his head right now that he can have me work 20 hours a day, 5 days a week because "We're in the Army". I'm a Navy guy, working at an Army unit (in Garrison) and this seems absolutely outrageous to me. Is there a policy (CFAO, QR&O, DAOD, etc.) that states how many hours a member can be forced to work in a day for non-operational reasons?

Thanks.

So, context being necessary for a full answer, here's my take.

There's really more than one question being asked here:

CAN the Sgt have you work as illustrated? - I would say that he can, given the concept of 7/24 liability, and as a pure point of law.

SHOULD the Sgt have you work as illustrated? - I would absolutely say no. Your efficiency and safety would degrade rapidly under those circumstances.

MAY the Sgt have you work as illustrated? - Perhaps, but it would come down to the local situation, and there would have to be some oversight. If folks are pulling 100hr weeks on a regular basis, then someone above the rank of Sgt should be looking at that.

In closing, I would propose that perhaps the Sgt was attempting to have you realize that irregular and extended work days are expected in your new location, contrary to what you may or may not have experienced elsewhere.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Not sure how my examples really differ from yours...

So if you work an extra eight hours one day, don't come in the next day, and get half a day short at some following time.  So rather than a normal 1:1, there is a 1.5 times off to compensate for OT.

Never really works out like that and normally if you can even get anything back it's pretty good at a busy unit.

The civvie option of compressed time actually just has them stacking their working hours into a slightly longer day. For example, they will work the two weeks worth of 80 hours in 9 business days vice 10. That tenth day isn't actually a day of leave, just means they've hit their quota and have a long weekend.  But if they were to work and extra 8 hours of additional time one week, they could take it as either 8 hours of OT pay, or 12 hours time in lieu of leave.  Because they can put in for time off in something like 1 hour increments (maybe less?) it makes it a but easier to track and figure out, where as we have half days of short and full days of annual.

 

[mariomike]

The civvie option of compressed time actually just has them stacking their working hours into a slightly longer day. For example, they will work the two weeks worth of 80 hours in 9 business days vice 10. That tenth day isn't actually a day of leave, just means they've hit their quota and have a long weekend.  But if they were to work and extra 8 hours of additional time one week, they could take it as either 8 hours of OT pay, or 12 hours time in lieu of leave.  Because they can put in for time off in something like 1 hour increments (maybe less?) it makes it a but easier to track and figure out, where as we have half days of short and full days of annual.

Depends on the employer. We had to take Leiu time as an entire 12-hour shift. Nothing less.  You could bank up to 96 hours. 8 shifts. Then burn it off, and replenish. Either that, or cash. Almost everyone took the cash.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Sorry, meant the DND (and general GoC) civie option. Their leave management seems pretty complicated. Not positive, but seem to remember it may go down as far as 15 minute increments, which seemed excessively granular.

In my previous jobs, OT only ever meant extra pay, but seems like a good option to be able to take time in lieu, or a combo of time off and pay it out.

 

[Remius]

So if you work an extra eight hours one day, don't come in the next day, and get half a day short at some following time.  So rather than a normal 1:1, there is a 1.5 times off to compensate for OT.

Never really works out like that and normally if you can even get anything back it's pretty good at a busy unit.

The civvie option of compressed time actually just has them stacking their working hours into a slightly longer day. For example, they will work the two weeks worth of 80 hours in 9 business days vice 10. That tenth day isn't actually a day of leave, just means they've hit their quota and have a long weekend.  But if they were to work and extra 8 hours of additional time one week, they could take it as either 8 hours of OT pay, or 12 hours time in lieu of leave.  Because they can put in for time off in something like 1 hour increments (maybe less?) it makes it a but easier to track and figure out, where as we have half days of short and full days of annual.

Ah ok. Fair point.

I doubt that CAF member are willing to give up the percentages given in the military factor of our pay.  Or are we suggesting they get overtime time in lieu and the compensation that’s is built in?

 

[Navy_Pete]

I'm okay with how we have it now.  Outside of deployments, most units should be able to manage peoples schedules for the most part to not intentionally drive them into excessive hours.  There will always be surges when everyone is working extra to prepare for things, or when something hits the fan.  Most good commands let their people manage it so that they can also give subordinates extra time off if there is some slow time to compensate.  Personally I think I could probably get the max # of short days for the remainder of my career and never even put a dent in the extra hours, but part of the job.  The extra % included is probably far less than what it would actually be if it was tracked.  Generally I find people don't mind working the extra hours if there is a good reason and they know ahead of time (if possible), but people get really pissed off when they spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for something and end up having to work late as a result. It's not always possible, but whenever we were able to always tried to let people come in late/leave early to make up for it.

It would be interesting though if they did start tracking extra hours for CAF and had to pay it out if it would encourage DND to relook at how they plan things.  Civilian OT is considered, and have seen them leave a ship out at sea overnight not to have to pay a few people 4 hours of OT for the tug.  Fuel costs are a different line item, but maybe if there was a CAF OT line item they may start considering our time valuable.

Kind of getting off topic from the original question though; think the OP was asking about a weird split shift situation.  Have done those before, and normally there is a minimum time you are paid for showing up (4 hours), so have done 8 hours work over 12.  We got an allowance for a dinner and paid at a higher rate, but haven't ever intentionally done that to anyone in the CAF (where they go home; short shifts like that are normal in some watch rotations, but your time in between is your own).

 

[CountDC]

can we backdate the tracked hours and get compensated?  We tracked actual hours at one unit and my work weeks were generally 80 to 100 hours.  Longest consecutive period was 13 weeks straight with no days off.  Wife was at the point she wanted to Negan the CO because she and the kids hardly saw me in the morning as I left to go back to work.  For a static office job that is beyond ridiculous.  Note that it wasn't because there was an over abundance of work to be done, a good share of the time was doing nothing.  It was a just because situation in which the work could have been done in a 40-50 hour week.  Am sure enough here have worked the reserve unit and heard the "you have to be in just because some of the troops are coming in to do XXX" or "its an exercise weekend and although you are not part of the exercise you have to work in the office just because".  My favourite though was "class A troops go to their regular jobs mon to fri then come in parade nights/exercises and don't get time off, why should the ftuc"  The 2 headed look when you mention telling them they will not get paid for coming in and see how many show up then.  Voluntarily coming in to be paid $300 to $400 for a weekend is not the same as being ordered in just because.

Sorry, originally meant to do a funny but ended up a bit of a rant.