Contract (traveler) RN’s having precedence over permanent staff

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Law Of The Workplace : One Thread

Because of the new nurse / patient ratio laws, effective Jan 2004, the hospital at which I work has hired several temporary (aka traveler) RN’s to comply with the law.

However, on days when the patient census falls below that needed for all nurses assigned to a shift, some nurses are cancelled or put on-call (meaning that if the number of patients should rise during that shift the nurses put on-call will be called in.) During the on-call time they are not receiving their full hourly rate,

Because the contracted nurses are paid whether they work or not, they are NEVER cancelled or put on-call, which means that very often a traveler gets to work for the entire shift whereas a permanent member of staff is home on-call.

Is this legal?

-- David Dixon (dpdixon@mac.com), March 17, 2004


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