May 5, 2004 |
2004-R-0405 | |
ALLOWABLE LENGTH OF WORK SHIFTS | ||
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By: John Moran, Associate Analyst | ||
You asked if state law allows an employer to change his employees’ work shift to either 12 or 16 hours a days for two or more days a week.
State law does not prevent an employer from having 12- or 16-hour daily work shifts. But there are restraints on other aspects of the workday and week that affect such scheduling.
State law:
1. makes an eight-hour day the legal day of work unless otherwise agreed to by employer and employee (CGS § 31-21);
2. prohibits more than six days of work in a calendar week in a commercial operation or industrial process (CGS § 53-303e);
3. with certain exceptions, requires employers to pay an hourly rate of time and a half for any work over 40 hours in a week (CGS § 31-76c); and
4. requires employers to give employees a 30-minute meal break during any seven and a half hour period or longer of work, with the break coming no earlier than two hours after arriving at work and no later than two hours before the end (CGS § 31-51ii).
Under federal law, the employer is obligated to provide a safe environment for the employees, but this law does not explicitly limit the hours in a work shift. Safety in the private sector work place is enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Considering state and federal law, an employer could institute 12 hour shifts up to six days a week as long as he paid the proper overtime pay an did not create an unsafe workplace as determined by OSHA.
For employees under a union contract, lengthening the work shift is generally required to be the subject of collective bargaining before the shift could be changed, unless the existing contract provides for longer shifts.
JM: ts