Hey, I’m having trouble with my employer. I work as a vikar nurse right now, but on „on-call” basis, without a turnus. Week 2 I have worked a total of 45,75 hours, which entitles me to 10,25 hours overtime pay. But that same week I have worked a double shift (day + night on the same day) and the nightshift, 9,5 hours, was counted also as overtime because of the short pause between shifts. The problem is as follows:
My employer says, that I get just 10,25 overtime, because of working over the 35,5 hours/week limit. And that overtime from the nightshift already counts towards that.
Total hours worked that week: 45,75
Overtime over 35,5 limit: 10,25
I say I should get 9,5 hours overtime because of working day + night and, on top of that, an additional 10,25 hours overtime for working over the 35,5 hour limit.
Total hours worked that week: 45,75
Overtime over 35,5 limit: 10,25
Overtime from working 2 shifts the same day: 9,5
I feel like what they are doing to me is overtime pyramiding (as in the screenshot), where they count overtime from one limit against 2 limits. I don’t know if it makes sense. I’m not fluent enough in Norwegian to find the right laws to talk to them. They just keep saying that it’s my own interpretation and basically are telling me to fuck off. I’ll be glad for any help and directions, especially if someone can point me to some law acts that would support my claim. Only things I can find are in English (see example) but I guess they will dismiss it because „it doesn’t work like that in Norway”.
by chabza
4 comments
The legal definition of overtid (over time) is more than 40 hours a week. What you have is the tariffavtale regulated salary.
Overtime pyramiding seems to be when the employer pays out to much to the employee.
I have never experienced getting double overtime for both weekly and daily limit on the same hour worked (this would be the pyramiding you mention).
My personal opinion would be to side with your manager.
Have you talked to your union representative about this?
Your employer is correct about how the rules work in Norway. I also believe you are wrong about what overtime pyramiding means, but I am not certain about that since it is not a term that is commonly used in Norway.
I assume you have a full 35,5hour schedule initially. On top of that you have worked an additional 9,5 hours one day, plus 0,75hours spread over the other days. That totals 10,25hours. Each extra hour worked counts as exactly one hour of overtime.
You seem to think that the 9,5 hours should count as 19 overtime hours. That is not how overtime works, and I believe that is the method of calculating which is known as overtime pyramiding.
It sounds like you want to count the same overtime twice because it both exceeds the daily and the weekly limit. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t count it twice.
I would question the legality of taking two shifts within a day though. How long was your break between the shifts?