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I work for a hospital in NJ that's recently updated their inclement weather policy. It prohibits workers from calling out on days with hazardous weather conditions (i.e. blizzards). In order to make employees arrive on time they are essentially requiring us to come to the hospital the day before a predicted weather emergency and stay overnight until our shift. There is no compensation for this. My question is whether this is legal or not. I've been looking through NJ Labor Rules and haven't really found anything pertaining to this specific practice and was hoping that someone shed some light on the subject.
Personally, I would have no problem coming in the day before if some form of monetary compensation were offered.
Employers be buggin'. I used to work a minimum wage job, was dependable as Big Ben, and then one day an ice storm occurred. Not able to even make it out of my driveway, let alone my neighborhood, in my car (I was slipping all over the place), I called to let my boss know I wouldn't be in that day. I'd be lying if I told you he didn't tell me to charter a plane or attempt to melt the ice with my hair dryer but that he EXPECTED ME IN...
You want me to risk my life for you for $7.25 an hour? Sorry, but I have slightly more self-love than that
Oh, and if you're non-exempt, they need to pay you for every minute you are at work, btw. What if they told you they'd like for you to spend the whole week there? lol
That's what 4WD vehicles are for. Up here employees who call in for weather get dismissed.
A 4WD car wouldn't make me impervious to all the 2WD drivers slipping and sliding all over the place. Despite our sometimes significant snowfall I don't think AWD is a requirement when living in NJ (the more urban parts anyways).
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Originally Posted by antilost
A 4WD car wouldn't make me impervious to all the 2WD drivers slipping and sliding all over the place. Despite our sometimes significant snowfall I don't think AWD is a requirement when living in NJ (the more urban parts anyways).
Where I live the 4WD is great for getting home, the last 6 miles being all uphill. The problem in getting to work is that those same 6 miles are all downhill, and 4WD doesn't help you stop. With snow and possible freezing rain overnight we'll see if I go in tomorrow.
I drive approximately 35 miles each way (40 min commute); but have access to public transportation. I think any scenario in which public transportation is still running would probably be a situation where I could still safely drive to work.
I don't really have any issues with the rules except that we're not paid to come in early. It's not a terrible policy but the burden of dealing with inclement weather shouldn't be entirely on the employee. I feel like the employer should shell out if they really care about hospital operations. Maybe enact an on-call pay policy?
If public transportation is running, there is no reason to come in early. At most, you would have to leave your home a bit earlier to get the bus/train.
Does the policy expressly REQUIRE you to come in the prior day or is it just suggested?
Back during the winter of 2009 - 2010, when Maryland had 3 huge blizzards and over 80 inches of snow total for the year, my insane former employer was enraged that the workers were not willing to drive through over a foot of snow on barely plowed roads to get to work. Their excuse was "we plowed the parking lot, so you should have been there." My reply (at least to my coworkers was) "How was I supposed to get to the parking lot?! It's not as if they sent a plow to my place and then plowed out the road leading to work!"
Jebus Crebus. Did reality ever send your boss a holiday card, or had they severed relations permanently?
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Idiots... they then tried to force everyone to work unpaid overtime to make up the last time. It was lunacy and a great way to lower employee moral just to make up for an extremely abnormal winter that we haven't seen the likes of in over 100 years.
Yeah, that would frost me. Did your area have any kind of global policy about snow emergencies and not driving in weather like that?
When I first moved from a seriously snowy portion of New York state to Cincinnati, Ohio back in the 80s, I discovered during my first winter there that when it snowed more than a couple of inches, the entire city basically shut down. The police ordered people to just stay off the roads unless it was an emergency or they were "essential personnel" who had to get to work in some outfit that had to remain open during a snow emergency (like the utility companies, emergency services, hospitals, etc.) and you could actually get ticketed if they caught you out driving in the stuff when you didn't have to.
I, of course, was dumbfounded to learn that three inches of snow constituted an emergency. I quickly realized the main reasons were because it was such a rare occurrence that nobody local really knew how to drive in it, and the area didn't have enough snow removal equipment to handle it. To me, three inches of snow had always been a fairly common occurrence in wintertime. My hometown might get that twice a week in any given period between November and April. Then again, I'd grown up in ski country. You put snow tires on the car just after Halloween if you hadn't already, and took them off sometime after Easter.
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My current employer just fires you if you're out of the office for 3 days without calling in. While calling in is easy, the casual treatment of the employees as disposable is so very corporate, even though it's a small, floundering company.
I drive approximately 35 miles each way (40 min commute); but have access to public transportation. I think any scenario in which public transportation is still running would probably be a situation where I could still safely drive to work.
I lived in the Northeast for 20 years. To my memory, any major snow storm would screw up all forms of mass transit. Whether it would shut down the system, different story.
Now I live in Arizona where there's not so much snow (well except in Flagstaff where I went for my undergraduate degree.) However we have more slippery roads that can flood during monsoons. This makes heading in or heading out of work in he afternoon or night, that can be tough.
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Despite our sometimes significant snowfall I don't think AWD is a requirement when living in NJ (the more urban parts anyways).
You put snow tires on the car just after Halloween if you hadn't already, and took them off sometime after Easter.
