A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Mandatory weekend work - Stargazer

Posted: Aug 07, 2010

Can a company impose mandatory weekend work on their employees who work one weekend day anyway? Just curious ! MTs have Friday to Monday to complete the mandatory schedule of say an extra five or 10 hours !!!

Mandatory weekend work - Beth

[ In Reply To ..]
It seems a company/corporation in the USA today can request most anything from their employees and if the employee does not want to comply, they can look for employment elsewhere. The corporations now days are not like long ago, they are money hungry, don't care about employees, don't care about the country they live in, they only care about how much money they can make on everyone.

The flip side of the coin is that employees today do not stay loyal to one company for their career, - NeutralNellie

[ In Reply To ..]
think they are entitled to the best shifts, expect top pay as a new employee, do not want to go the extra mile, talk about pay with their co-workers, have a million excuses and do not care about the companies they work for.

What happened to the days of starting a job, doing your very best, getting promoted based on merit and hard work, being reliable?

Companies and employees are like the chicken and the egg, and no one wins. Both need to go back to times past and actually work together.

As an MTSO, yes one of those horrible people, I have learned that 1 in 10 employees actually does what they say they will but the other 9 will complain and whine loudly about how unfair they are treated. I value the excellent employees and have learned to ignore those that will never change or replace them as I can.

By the way, MTSOs do not make what you think. For my 80 hours a week, I bring home $75,000 a year. If I worked two full-time MT jobs, I would bring home more. I am not complaining; I love what I do, but I think so many things are blown out of proportion here that no one can separate one service or employee from another.

Mandator work - Stargazer

[ In Reply To ..]
My question was can a company enforce mandatory extra work on a weekend when an employee is already diligently working one weekend day! I did not expect a rundown of an opinion. You've obviously got more than one.

We do not have to reiterate the dynamics of this profession, positive or negative for that matter.

I am not complaining, not whining, just interested in ethics.

I did not brink up what MTSOs make and the like.

Just wanted a simple answer to a simple question.

A simple answer - the obvious

[ In Reply To ..]
Of course they cannot force you to work mandatory weekend hours. What they absolutely can do, however (assuming you do not have a written contract prohibiting such), is re-evaluate their staffing needs and determine that what they need for your position is someone who will work those hours and then you get to decide whether you wish to work when they need you or whether you want to find other employment in a depressed job market. If you have a conflict and cannot work, I'm sure if you speak to your CCM in the same supercilious tone that you did the poster here, your CCM will make every effort to accommodate a schedule change for you.

A company has the right to hire/schedule employees for whatever hours they determine to be the most beneficial for them, and they have a right to re-evaluate their work flow and restructure if they feel it is in the best interest of the corporation. And that is the key, the best interest of the corporation.

loyalty - Alice

[ In Reply To ..]
What I see on these boards is not so much "entitlement" as it is folks expecting perhaps a little loyalty themselves.

Those magical days of working hard and being recognized and rewarded for it are gone...now replaced with working harder than you've ever worked while being paid less to do so.

I think what so many of us are dealing with is a sense of loss, as so many of us remember "the good old days," when work was plentiful and we felt appreciated for our good work.

I think a lot of us are probably in mourning of sorts, trying to find our way in a new world, dealing with paying all the same bills with half the money, and coming to grips with the fact that it's just never going to get better.

as for your 75 grand a year...kudos. I work 60 hours a week and don't even make minimum. Last year I didn't break 30...so i would gladly take 1 of your 2 hypothetical full-time jobs that would pay more than 75 grand.

alice - mourning

[ In Reply To ..]
That's good what you had to say about a "period of mourning." I have to keep reminding myself (thinking about steady work, reliable paycheck, need for my services)-- "It doesn't exist anymore." I feel like I am going through stages of grief, with denial, anger, acceptance... Denial is when I sit in front of the computer for my whole scheduled shift and keep checking for jobs, and believe my TL when she says, "I'm sure it will pick up soon." Anger is when I post that ABC company is a scam. Acceptance is when I forget my shift, make no assumptions about what my paycheck will be, and sit down to work any hours, any day, just like the forest takes the rainfall at whatever day or hour it falls. I still can't quite accept that this is no longer the field for me, though. I envy those who are pragmatic or flexible (and young) enough to move on without too much reflection and too much time "starving it out."

How do you forget your shift? - Just curious

[ In Reply To ..]
Do they have you on a rotating schedule? I've never heard of anyone who simply "forgot" their shift, so I'm just curious as to how this can happen.

"forget your shift" as in, "forget about having work - during your scheduled shift

[ In Reply To ..]
.

Enjoyed what you had to say, NeutralNellie. - Poppy

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Thanks for a good, balancing perspective too seldom available.

Once upon a time we weren't able to gather anonymously from afar to complain but fussed at friends and family, who'd tend to agree when we were reasonable and raise their eyebrows when we strayed into silly.

Loyalty has to be earned. - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
I don't WANT to job hop. I have 15 years left to retirement and would love love love to find one place to finish those years out. But work vanishing Houdini style---now you see it/now you don't, pay cuts, etc., do not loyalty warrant. In addition, all the "perks" that used to come with seniority with one firm are no longer there; the newly hired makes as much (or sometimes even more) than those firmly in place and a decision to cover the weekends sweeps up even the well-tenured employees, not just the bottom of the seniority totem.

My can opener is no more loyal to me than it is the next person that picks it to open that can of tuna, and as long as MTSOs continue to treat their MTs as if they are some kind of machine, that's the same loyalty they are going to get. When MTSOs want to start demonstrating that we and our loyalty are worth something, there will be more loyalty given.

amen - s/m - Alice

[ In Reply To ..]
your analogy of the can opener...brilliant.

Great post NeutralNellie - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
There are so many MTs out there with a poor work ethic, i.e. they call out sick 10 minutes before their shift starts, they run errands and say they'll be right back and you end up waiting hours for them, they complain when there is no work but when there is a lot available they never have the time to help out, they change their schedule every month, it goes on and on. I am so glad to have finally gotten out of this business. The true professionals are the ones who know the ups and downs of this business and can roll with them. Too many newbies want gravy hours, accounts, dictators, etc. The profession has been watered down.

No, they're no more profit-oriented now than they - Poppy

[ In Reply To ..]
ever were. Making profits is what they do. Failing to increase profits year after year is usually seen as a sign of mistakes in management.

The thing is, the period since the 1970s has been an excessively business-friendly one legislatively. Remember such catch phrases as "We need to get of the back of business" and "government can't do anything right?" Well, we did big time, dismantling business regulations that had been enacted only after decades of abuse and misery to stop destructive practices.

That said, some push to have employees work extra when extra is needed has always been a part of the workplace. One complicating factor is that the flexibility we appreciate so much while working from home and being paid on a production basis is recognized in law and can work to the benefit of both employee and employer.

For instance, I found that when work isn't available, GENERALLY speaking, the law does not agree that MTs who choose to spend slack hours staring at a screen waiting for a report to come up (instead of flexing their hours to work when reports are available) are working during those periods. Within some limits, it's expected that we will act reasonably to make ourselves available when work is available.

If you feel like researching labor laws as they apply to your situation, Stargazer, I'd be very interested in reading what you find out.

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